The United Nations held its first major international conference in one of America’s mountain states, bringing scores of civil society organizations (CSOs) to discuss ways on making “cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable by 2030.”

The annual UN Civil Society Conference, which had been meeting mostly in New York, site of the UN world headquarters, and in some foreign capitals, was hosted by Salt Lake City’s Mayor’s office August 26-28 under the title “Building Inclusive and sustainable cities and communities.”

More than half of the current world population of 7.7 billion now live in cities big and small. The UN has projected that the world population will reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and 5 billion of them will be in living in urban areas. Megacities of 10-20 million people each will be even bigger.

The conference adopted a lengthy outcome document that pledged to implement one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which calls for focusing on cities and human settlements throughout the world buffeted by climate change, insecurity and economic problems.

The document urged all stakeholders “to enhance inclusivity and respect for the dignity of all, from which human rights originate” and “to work to remove unjust systemic barriers to success, noting that bias and discrimination marginalize and segregate large segments of society.”

It urged stakeholders to “apply conscious inclusivity and respect for human dignity and rights in our daily lives while advocating for similar efforts in our corporate and organizational lives, in our laws, regulations, policies, and practices, and in our economy.”

The president of the UN General Assembly, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, praised NGOs for their contribution to strengthen the work of the UN. But she warned that many major challenges have remained unaddressed.

“I encourage you to continue to engage with your governments to ensure that we use these opportunities to put us on the right path, and work in your communities on local solutions and initiatives that have the potential to be scaled-up and replicated.”

Salt Lake City introduced its Youth Climate Compact during the conference, calling for raising awareness in “our own communities about policy that is detrimental to the health of our planet and promote policy which works to confront the main causes of the climate crisis.”

The Youth Climate Compact said an estimated 143 million people around the world will be displaced by climate change by 2050.

The delegation from China was headed by Dezhi Lu, vice president of China Charity Alliance, and chair of the Huamin Charity Organization.

Attendees included a delegation from China headed by Dezhi Lu, vice president of China Charity Alliance, and chair of the Huamin Charity Organization, a non-governmental organization among the dozens of UN-recognized NGOs.

NGOs are the “most powerful part of society” and they can bring inclusiveness and collective sharing in human settlements, said Lu.

“Inclusiveness is a celebration of our diversity,” Lu noted. “The first step of this is communication and mutual learning. NGOs are diverse, open, and peaceful organizations and are therefore in the best position to understand the value and strength of an inclusive society.”

Lu said he spent the last 10 years visiting NGOs around the world and found that inclusiveness and collective sharing are the most important values for the development of human civilization.

Efforts to build and protect cities and human communities come at a time the world, human lives and all creatures and the eco-systems are threatened by climate change, conflicts and a long list of woes that are chipping away the earth’s habitable environments desired by its inhabitants.

The focus on cities and human settlements is one of 2030 Global Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals.

The rural-to-urban migration is expected to continue in some of the most populous countries like China, India and some African countries.

China, the world’s most populous country with 1.4 billion, has acknowledged that 56 percent of its population already live in cities and the urban population is expected to increase to 60 percent by 2020. China’s massive migration to cities has been unprecedented in world contemporary history.

It has been a long, arduous journey – a journey ridden curiously with obstacles and indifference. Two decades have passed by since the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted, by consensus and without reservation, its landmark and norm-setting resolution 53/243 on the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace in 1999.

The current President of the UNGA Ms Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces, former Foreign Minister of Ecuador is convening on 13 September the UN High-Level Forum on the Culture of Peace underlining the importance the world body attaches to full and effective implementation of this forward-looking decision.

It was exactly on that date 20 years ago the UN took its most forward-looking stride in ensuring a peaceful planet for all of us since the Charter of the UN in 1945. The UN Charter arose out of the ashes of the Second World War and the UN Declaration and the Programme of Action on Culture of Peace was born in the aftermath of the long-drawn Cold War.

Simply put, the Culture of Peace as a concept means that every one of us needs to consciously make peace and nonviolence a part of our daily existence. We should not isolate peace as something separate or distant. We should know how to relate to one another without being aggressive, without being violent, without being disrespectful, without neglect, without prejudice.

It is important to realize that the absence of peace takes away the opportunities that we need to better ourselves, to prepare ourselves, to empower ourselves to face the challenges of our lives, individually and collectively.

It is also a positive, dynamic participatory process wherein “dialogue is encouraged and conflicts are solved in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation.”

Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury

Each and every individual is important to the process of transformation required to secure the culture of peace in our world. Each person must be convinced that nonviolent, cooperative action is possible.

If a person succeeds in resolving a conflict in a nonviolent manner at any point in time, then this individual has made a big contribution to the world because this singular act has succeeded in transferring the spirit of non-violence and cooperation to another individual. When repeated, such a spirit will grow exponentially, a practice that will become easier each time the choice is made to face a situation, resolve a conflict non-violently.

On 16 December 1998, at a Security Council meeting on the maintenance of peace and security and post-conflict peace-building, I implored that “International peace and security can be best strengthened, not by actions of States alone, but by women and men through the inculcation of the culture of peace and non-violence in every human being and every sphere of activity. The objective of the culture of peace is the empowerment of people.”

As we were coming out of the Cold War, it dawned on us to see how best to take advantage of the end of that era of bitter rivalry and proxy wars and to make peace sustainable.

The Constitution of UNESCO says, “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” The concept of the culture of peace started evolving in this spirit, to promote a change of values and behavior.

Soon after I became the Ambassador of Bangladesh to the United Nations in New York in 1996, I felt that the culture of peace is a marvelous concept that humanity needs to embrace. I took the lead in proposing in 1997 along with some other Ambassadors in a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to include a specific, self-standing agenda item of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on culture of peace.

A new agenda item on the culture of peace was thus agreed upon after considerable negotiating hurdles and the new item was allocated to the plenary of the General Assembly for discussion on an annual basis.

Under this item, UNGA adopted in 1997 a resolution to declare the year 2000 the “International Year for the Culture of Peace”, and in 1998, a resolution to declare the period from 2001 to 2010 the “International Decade for the Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World”.

On 13 September 1999, the United Nations adopted the Declaration and Programme of Action on the Culture of Peace, a monumental document that transcends boundaries, cultures, societies and nations.

It was an honour for me to Chair the nine-month long negotiations that led to the adoption of this historic norm-setting document that is considered as one of the most significant legacies of the United Nations that would endure generations.

I introduced the agreed text of that document (A/RES/53/243) on behalf of all Member States for adoption by the Assembly with its President Didier Opertti of Uruguay chairing the meeting. Through this landmark adoption, the General Assembly laid down humanity’s charter for the new approaching millennium.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of that momentous action by the most universal global body in a “befitting manner” on 13 September 2019, the on-going 73rd session of the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution 73/126 on 12 December 2018 – with the co-sponsorship of 100 Member States led by Bangladesh – which requested “the President of the General Assembly to give special attention to the appropriate and befitting observance of the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration and Programme of Action, which falls on 13 September 2019, by holding the high-level forum on that date, which will be an opportunity for renewing the commitments to strengthen further the global movement for the culture of peace.”

A significant aspect of the essential message as articulated in the UN documents effectively asserts that the “culture of peace is a process of individual, collective and institutional transformation.” Transformation is of the most essential relevance here.

The Programme of Action identifies eight specific areas which encourage actions at all levels – the individual, the family, the community, the nation, the region – and, of course, the global level. Though the Declaration and Programme of Action is an agreement among nations, governments, civil society, media and individuals are all identified in this document as key actors.

It is essential to remember that the culture of peace requires a change of our hearts, change of our mindset. The Culture of Peace can be achieved through simple ways of living, changing of our own behavior, changing how we relate to each other.

How do we build and promote the culture of peace? To turn the culture of peace into a global, universal movement, the most crucial element that is needed is for every one of us to be a true believer in peace and non-violence.

A lot can be achieved in promoting the culture of peace through individual resolve and action. By immersing ourselves in a mode of behaviour that supports and promotes peace, individual efforts will – over time – combine and unite, and peace, security and sustainability will emerge. This is the only way we shall achieve a just and sustainable peace in the world.

All educational institutions need to offer opportunities that prepare the students not only to live fulfilling lives but also to be responsible and productive citizens of the world. For that, educators need to introduce holistic and empowering curricula that cultivate the culture of peace in each and every young mind. Indeed, this should be more appropriately called “education for global citizenship”.

Such learning cannot be achieved without well-intentioned, sustained, and systematic peace education that leads the way to the culture of peace. If our minds could be likened to a computer, then education provides the software with which to “reboot” our priorities and actions away from violence, towards the culture of peace.

For this, I believe that early childhood affords a unique opportunity for us to sow the seeds of transition from the culture of war to the culture of peace. The events that a child experiences early in life, the education that this child receives, and the community activities and socio-cultural mindset in which a child is immersed all contribute to how values, attitudes, traditions, modes of behavior, and ways of life develop.

We need to use this window of opportunity to instil the rudiments that each individual needs to become agents of peace and non-violence from an early life. I would like to add that young people of today should embrace the culture of peace in a way that can not only shape their lives but can also shape the future of the world.

Let us – yes, all of us — embrace the culture of peace for the good of humanity, for the sustainability of our planet and for making our world a better place to live.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is Founder of the Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP), Permanent Representative of Bangladesh (1996-2001) and Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations (2002-2007)

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/culture-peace-takes-big-stride-un-observes-20th-anniversary-norm-setting-1999-decision/feed/0Disaster Risk Resilience: Key to Protecting Vulnerable Communitieshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities/#respondWed, 28 Aug 2019 07:23:40 +0000Armida Salsiah Alisjahbanahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163020Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

By Armida Salsiah AlisjahbanaBANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 28 2019 (IPS)

The past five years have been the hottest on record in Asia and the Pacific. Unprecedented heatwaves have swept across our region, cascading into slow onset disasters such as drought. Yet heat is only part of the picture. Tropical cyclones have struck new, unprepared parts of our region and devastatingly frequent floods have ensued. In Iran, these affected 10 million people this year and displaced 500,000 of which half were children. Bangladesh is experiencing its fourth wave of flooding in 2019. Last year, the state of Kerala in India faced the worst floods in a century.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

This is the new climate reality in Asia and the Pacific. The scale of forecast economic losses for the region is sobering. Including slow-onset disasters, average annualised losses until 2030 are set to quadruple to about $675 billion compared to previous estimates. This represents 2.4 percent of the region’s GDP. Economic losses of such magnitude will undermine both economic growth and our region’s efforts to reduce poverty and inequality, keeping children out of schools and adults of work. Basic health services will be undermined, crops destroyed and food security jeopardised. If we do not act now, Asia-Pacific’s poorest communities will be among the worst affected.

Four areas of Asia and the Pacific are particularly impacted, hotspots which combine vulnerability to climate change, poverty and disaster risk. In transboundary river basins in South and South-East Asia such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river basin, floods alternate with prolonged droughts. In South-East Asia and East and North-East Asia earthquakes, tsunamis and landslides threaten poor populations in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Intensifying sand and dust storms are blighting East, Central and South-west Asia. Vulnerable populations in Pacific Small Islands Developing States are five times more at risk of disasters than a person in South and South-East Asia. Many countries’ sustainable development prospects are now directly dependent on their exposure to natural disasters and their ability to build resilience.

Yet this vicious cycle between poverty, inequalities and disasters is not inevitable. It can be broken if an integrated approach is taken to investing in social and disaster resilience policies. As disasters disproportionately affect the poor, building resilience must include investment in social protection as the most effective means of reducing poverty. Conditional cash transfer systems can be particularly effective as was shown in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. Increasing pre-arranged risk finance and climate risk insurance is also crucial. While investments needed are significant, in most countries these are equivalent to less than half the costs forecast to result from natural disasters.

The use of technological innovations to protect the region from natural disasters must go hand in hand with these investments. Big data reveal patterns and associations between complex disaster risks and predict extreme weather and slow onset disasters to improve the readiness of our economies and our societies. In countries affected by typhoons, big data applications can make early warning systems stronger and can contribute to saving lives and reducing damage. China and India are leading the way in using technology to warn people of impending disasters, make their infrastructure more resilient and deliver targeted assistance to affected farmers and citizens.

Asia and the Pacific can learn from this best practice and multilateral cooperation is the way to give scale to our region’s disaster resilience effort. With this ambition in mind, representatives from countries across the region are meeting in Bangkok this week at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to explore regional responses to natural disasters. Their focus will include strengthening Asia-Pacific’s Disaster Resilience Network and capitalising on innovative technology applications for the benefit of the broader region. This is our opportunity to replicate successes, accelerate drought mitigation strategies and develop a regional sand and dust storm alert system. I hope the region can seize it to protect vulnerable communities from disaster risk in every corner of Asia and the Pacific.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/disaster-risk-resilience-key-protecting-vulnerable-communities/feed/0Kenya: The troubles of a science PhD from the Westhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/kenya-troubles-science-phd-west/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kenya-troubles-science-phd-west
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/kenya-troubles-science-phd-west/#respondTue, 27 Aug 2019 17:22:20 +0000Verah Vashti Okeyohttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163011Graduate students of the London School of Economics and Political Science gathered at Kenya’s coast in September 2018, where the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Dr Mukhisa Kituyi told them: “With your international credibility, it is easier and tempting to leave and take out of the continent the little […]

Graduate students of the London School of Economics and Political Science gathered at Kenya’s coast in September 2018, where the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Dr Mukhisa Kituyi told them: “With your international credibility, it is easier and tempting to leave and take out of the continent the little intellectual resource that could solve problems their countries face.”

Verah Vashti Okeyo

He was persuading them to come back home, to Africa, to ‘save the modern state from collapse’. Many PhD holders with African descent have taken Dr Kituyi’s message to heart, and returned to Africa, but according to interviews with fourteen returnees in biomedical sciences for this article, they have had a hard time adjusting to life at home.

The common theme from the returnees was the lack of funding for their work and inadequately equipped labs. When they managed to resolve the two, they had bureaucracy that is ingrained in the DNA of the institutions and the people they are expected to work with.

The World Bank estimates that unemployment for people with advanced education in Africa is as high a 20 per cent in some countries, and this is what returnees face when they land. Additionally, their return back home is compounded by other structural challenges such as bureaucracy, all these in context of a continent that have few researchers.

Kenyan Martin Rono, a PhD in cell and molecular biology from a joint Germany-France programme, anticipated a few challenges when he took his flight back home, where his knowledge about malaria – one of the country’s biggest public health problem — would be needed. That could not be further from the truth, first with the assumption that his return was a noble idea that would be praised.

Transferring the responsibility for development from the state to the individual

But this is planted in the graduate’s mind right from the start. In Kenya, like many other, Kenya’s colonial relationships sustain scholarships such as the Commonwealth Scholarships offered to former colonies of England, which often have a condition that the recipient of the scholarships need to return home after their studies to develop their countries. This assumption is rooted on neoliberalism, which transfers development from the responsibility of the state to individuals.

When returnees leave for their studies abroad, there is an overt expectation communicated to them through funding they receive to pursue their studies. For instance, the Commonwealth PhD scholarships for low and middle income countries limit applicants to six themes. Speaking at the launch of Kenya’s National Science and Research Strategy, Tom Ogada – the Chairman of the Kenyan National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (NACOSTI) – said that the problems in the continent have forced scientists to ask themselves very hard questions and “they cannot follow their passion, but solutions to their citizens’ issues”.

This leaves returnees in a pickle, but this is not a new thing in the north-south relations. Just like migrants send money back home, returnees are expected to return with ideas and innovation as well as a link between Africa and the influential and richer host institutions in the west.

This is where the antagonism when they come home originates. To the locals, the returnees come back to try applying what they learnt from the well-resourced western universities, much to the consternation of their local counterparts who interpret it as a communication of their inferiority and lack of civilization. This, Lisa Åkesson and Maria Eriksson Baaz[2] state, may lead to exposure, exclusion and, sometimes, even outright harassment and belittling.

The unpredicted challenges of hierarchy and bureaucracy

A returnee who researches HIV – who requested be anonymous – needed a lab, at Kenya’s oldest and most respected tertiary institution, the University of Nairobi. It took three months to gain access to the lab due to entrenched bureaucracies intermingled with politics and the pecking order in science.

“There is a hierarchy of a system, where you are told to ‘follow the channels, your time will come’ and that kind of talk, so I sat there waiting, and not even free to give ideas, lest I be seen as pretending to know more than my superiors” she waited.

Then the university told her there was no position in the organizational structure as a postdoc.

She lamented: “They said the Human Resource system only recognized lecturers who also researches, not an independent researcher who is working towards mastery of a specialized [field] without the responsibilities of teaching”

For three months, she wrote letters, attended meetings as guilt clawed at her soul for being paid by her Canadian funder that would support her work and have no work to show for it. It took a call from the funders, abroad, to allow her access to the lab.

Another returnee said he got into disciplinary issues for asking that two of his colleagues maintain correspondence in institutional emails whenever they were communicating with research collaborators. He was shooed down by “we have signed bigger deals in these personal Yahoo and Gmail emails that you are now belittling”.

Then there were those that were not lucky to get a position at all, and settled for some in areas they were not skilled in.

When Dr. Rono came back to Kenya in 2008, there were no jobs in his area of expertise— genomics in Malaria— and he accepted a position as a researcher in HIV.

“It was a short detour but also it was the job that was available at that time,” he said.

Dr Rono’s research is attempting to modify the makeup of mosquitoes in an effort to make them capable of spreading Malaria, a disease that kills at least 700 children under five in Africa, daily, and is responsible for more than a quarter of all children deaths.

The labs that are equipped to conduct this kind of research are few. Rono, now based at UK’s Wellcome Trust funded centre in Kenya’s coast, has little complaints about where he works but that has not protected him against bureaucracy in getting reagents. For the four years in France and Germany, Rono says he would order reagents for manipulating the DNA, and he would get them in hours or days because “the manufacturers were just around the corner”

When he came to Kenya, he had to import the reagents, and this would take days, further dampening his spirit.

He said: “The cost, the process of having the reagents cleared from customs can take months”.

Lack of PhDs in Africa

The frustration of returning to Africa with a PhD in sciences has persuaded many of the PhDs to remain in the western countries especially, when the challenges are also compounded by poor governance that in turn may affect the science handled in the countries.

Many PhDs have migrated, depleting an already not-so critical mass of PhDs, who is able to research and tutor in Africa, and with negative consequences on knowledge production: Africa only produces 1 per cent of the world’s research and mostly from Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa.

Tom Kariuki, PhD and Director of the pan African funding platform; Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) from the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), says that it does not help much that African governments are allocating very little money not only on the people who have had a PhD, but the entire process of getting a PhD: little monies from the national exchequer to the education of science from primary school to institutions of higher learning; little money to facilitate research; no state funding for well-equipped labs; poor pay for the PhDs.

“Most governments have a short-term goal, while even getting the PhD and creating an environment where the PhD can practice is a long-term investment,” he said.

The continent currently has 198 researchers per million people, a paltry ratio compared to as many as over 4,000 in the UK and US. Africa needs a million new PhDs to achieve the world average for the number of researchers per capita.

In an interview about unrelated matter, Faith Osier who is a Kenyan globally acclaimed malaria researcher, now based in Germany, said that she has found herself more useful to the partner lab in Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) while away. Dr Osier has been able to recruit PhDs to work alongside her as she mentors them.

She said: “While we can appreciate that African governments are trying to invest more money, but is it enough to conduct quality research, train, mentor, and for the scientist to lead a quality life or even take their children to school?”

There is no data to monitor the movement of PhDs out of the continent, but some literature has estimated the data as between 20,000 to 25,000 a year.

PhDs, like Osier, defy the neoliberal approach through which returnees are viewed: While the returnee may be part of a peoplehood — bound by some elements to their countries such as exercises of a democratic processes like voting or tribe — their movement in and out of their countries of origin are mostly personal, not some act of nationalism: they want proper pay, and other career advancing opportunities.

Institutions like the AAS and collaborations with funders have founded mentorships and programs such as Future Leaders African Independent Research (FLAIR) that grants about 150,000 GBP every year for a period of two years for returnees to conduct their own research.

Aside from the financial support, the programmes pair the young scientist with more experienced researchers who act as mentors.

Periodically, the cohorts meet physically where they are given courses to refresh on critical skills that would enable them to work efficiently in the developing world. These include writing grant proposals, managing the teams they hire for their research, community and public engagement.

Dr Kariuki said he was surprised at the many post-doctoral applicants who applied for FLAIR and many other opportunities from the 11 consortiums he oversees.

“I was so surprised that they were all willing to come home,” Dr Kariuki said.

Staying away from Africa

Conversations with the returnees revealed several concerns at individual and institutional level. While acknowledging that some of the decisions they make are motivated by personal reasons, most of them lamented about the bureaucracies in the universities and research companies the former PhD students looked forward to coming back home to work for. The former PhD students often ended up being questioned about “letters whose purposes we do not comprehend”, delays in procuring reagents, and hierarchical decision making. Since some of the labs are the only ones of their kind in the entire country, with the equipment needed for their scientific work, they are left with little or no choice, but to endure the struggles.

The returnees also hinted at a gaping chasm between the needs of the country for researchers communicated to them when they get scholarships to study, and how they are treated when they try to meet that deficiency: “When going abroad to study, you are told to come back home because your set of skills is needed, and then when you land here, there are too many hurdles from the same institution, to allow you to practice”

The returnees have found strategies of coping with these challenges, such as staying in the countries from where they acquired their PhDs, and conducting research, partnering with a home institution while they are abroad.

Pan African organizations, such as the African Academy of Sciences, have recognized the struggle that the young scientists face, and responded by creating initiatives to offer finances and support for soft skills to enable them to navigate their circumstances such as proposal writing. However, only time will tell whether it will solve the challenges of the returnees.

Money and a deliberate adjustment of research institutions is needed

This article highlighted the struggles of young African researchers, especially in the biomedical field. There is a chronic shortage of PhDs in the continent to build a critical mass of researchers, and this is exacerbated by a poor state of the education system in the continent. Therefore, aspiring researchers have sought education abroad mostly through scholarships, in which one of the conditions is that they will come back home and contribute to alleviating the shortage of researchers. Many of the PhDs returned home to a bureaucratic system that makes it difficult for them to employ and use their skills. 14 PhDs who spoke to this writer cited bureaucracy as the biggest challenge, second to lack of funding. The PhDs have employed strategies to cope with this including remaining in the countries they trained in. Noting the researchers’ disillusionments, donor and pan African organisations have instituted fellowships such as FLAIR which not only gives the researchers money for their work but also mentorship. To make PhDs interested in coming back home, money and a deliberate adjustment of research institutions is needed.

Verah Vashti Okeyo is a Global Health Reporter with Nation Media Group and based in Nairobi, Kenya

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/kenya-troubles-science-phd-west/feed/0Two Million Children in West and Central Africa Robbed of an Education Due to Conflicthttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/two-million-children-west-central-africa-robbed-education-due-conflict/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=two-million-children-west-central-africa-robbed-education-due-conflict
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/two-million-children-west-central-africa-robbed-education-due-conflict/#respondSat, 24 Aug 2019 10:09:57 +0000IPS Correspondenthttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162966Fourteen-year-old Fanta lives in a tent in a settlement in Zamaï, a village in the Far North Region of Cameroon with her mother and two brothers. They came here more than a year ago after her father and elder brother were murdered and her elder sister abducted by the extremist group Boko Haram. The day […]

Fanta Mohamet, 14, writes on the blackboard at the school she attends in Zamaï, a village near a settlement for refugees in Mayo-Tsanaga, Far North Region, Cameroon on 28 May 2019. Courtesy: United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

By IPS CorrespondentJOHANNESBURG, Aug 24 2019 (IPS)

Fourteen-year-old Fanta lives in a tent in a settlement in Zamaï, a village in the Far North Region of Cameroon with her mother and two brothers. They came here more than a year ago after her father and elder brother were murdered and her elder sister abducted by the extremist group Boko Haram.

The day members of the armed extremist group Boko Haram came to their home in Nigeria to search for her father, a police officer, was the day everything changed.

The fate of her sister is unknown but each year thousands of girls are abducted by the armed group and forced into marriage.

There are 1,500 other displaced people who live in the settlement in Zamaï – more than three fifths of whom are children. And while life remains difficult, Fanta has something many other children of violence in the region do not, she is able to continue her education despite the prevailing insecurity.

According to new report released Aug. 23 by the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF), nearly two million children in West and Central Africa are being robbed of an education due to violence and insecurity in and around their schools.

“Ideological opposition to what is seen as Western-style education, especially for girls, is central to many of the disputes that ravage the region. As a result, schoolchildren, teachers, administrators and the education infrastructure are being deliberately targeted. And region-wide, such attacks are on the rise,” UNICEF noted.

Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, are experiencing a surge in threats and attacks against students, teachers and schools.

Areas where schools are primarily affected by conflict. Courtesy: UNICEF

The report also noted:

Nearly half of the schools closed across the region are located in northwest and southwest Cameroon; 4,437 schools there closed as of June 2019, pushing more than 609,000 children out of school.

More than one quarter of the 742 verified attacks on schools globally in 2019 took place in five countries across West and Central Africa.

Between April 2017 and June 2019, the countries of the central Sahel – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – witnessed a six-fold increase in school closures due to violence, from 512 to 3,005.

And CAR saw a 21 percent increase in verified attacks on schools between 2017 and 2019.

“Deliberate attacks and unabating threats against education – the very foundation of peace and prosperity have cast a dark shadow on children, families, and communities across the region,” said Gornitzka. “I visited a displacement camp in Mopti, central Mali, where I met young children at a UNICEF-supported safe learning space. It was evident to me how vital education is for them and for their families.”

UNICEF has supported the setup of 169 community learning centres in Mali, which provide safe spaces for children to learn.

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), a coalition of international human rights and education organisations from across the world, noted that in the past five years the coalition had documented more than 14,000 attacks in 34 countries and that there was a systematic pattern of attacks on education. “Armed forces and armed groups were also reportedly responsible for sexual violence in educational settings, or along school routes, in at least 17 countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the same period.”

In May, GCPEA released a 76-page report on the effects that the 2016-2017 attacks by armed groups on hundreds of schools in the Kasai region of central Democratic Republic of Congo had on children.

Based on over 55 interviews with female students, as well as principals, and teachers from schools that were attacked in the region, the report described how members of armed groups raped female students and school staff during the attacks or when girls were fleeing such attacks. Girls were also abducted from schools to “purportedly to join the militia, but instead raped or forced them to “marry” militia members”.

“Being out of school, even for relatively short periods, increases the risk of early marriage for girls,” GCPEA had said.

UNICEF raised this also as a concern for children affected by the conflict in West and Central Africa.

“Out-of-school children also face a present filled with dangers. Compared to their peers who are in school, they are at a much higher risk of recruitment by armed groups. Girls face an elevated risk of gender-based violence and are forced into child marriage more often, with ensuing early pregnancies and childbirth that threaten their lives and health,” the UNICEF Child Alert titled Education Under Threat in West and Central Africa, noted.

Fanta Mohamet, 14, on her way home from school in Zamaï, a village near a settlement for displaced people in Mayo-Tsanaga, Far North Region, Cameroon on 28 May 2019. Courtesy: United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

UNICEF has long been sounding the alarm about the attacks on schools, students and educators, stating that these are attacks on children’s right to an education and on their futures.

The agency and its partners called on governments, armed forces, other parties to take action to stop attacks and threats against schools, students, teachers and other school personnel in West and Central Africa – and to support quality learning in the region.

The U.N. body also called on States to endorse and implement the Safe Schools Declaration. The declaration provides States the opportunity to express broad political support for the protection and continuation of education in armed conflict.

“With more than 40 million 6- to 14-year-old children missing out on their right to education in West and Central Africa, it is crucial that governments and their partners work to diversify available options for quality education,” said UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa Marie-Pierre Poirier. “Culturally suitable models with innovative, inclusive and flexible approaches, which meet quality learning standards, can help reach many children, especially in situation of conflict.”

UNICEF is working with governments across West and Central Africa to offer alternative teaching and learning tools, which includes the first-of-its-kind Radio Education in Emergencies programme. Other interventions also include psychosocial support, the distribution of exercise books, pencils and pens to children to facilitate their learning.

“Education is important. If a girl marries young, it’s dangerous. If her husband doesn’t care for her, with an education she can take care of herself,” Fanta said.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/two-million-children-west-central-africa-robbed-education-due-conflict/feed/0A Key Role for 1.8 Billion Youth in UN’s 2030 Development Agendahttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/a-key-role-for-1-8-billion-youth-in-uns-2030-development-agenda/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-key-role-for-1-8-billion-youth-in-uns-2030-development-agenda
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/a-key-role-for-1-8-billion-youth-in-uns-2030-development-agenda/#respondFri, 16 Aug 2019 08:27:47 +0000Thalif Deenhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162885The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is convinced that the world’s 1.8 billion adolescents and youth– a quarter of the global population—have a key role to play in helping implement the UN’s 2030 Development Agenda. In an interview with IPS, UNFPA Deputy Executive Director (Programme) Dereje Wordofa, said “young people are at the centre of sustainable development”. […]

Students in Primary Seven at Zanaki Primary School in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania during an English language class. Credit: Sarah Farhat/World Bank.

By Thalif DeenUNITED NATIONS, Aug 16 2019 (IPS)

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is convinced that the world’s 1.8 billion adolescents and youth– a quarter of the global population—have a key role to play in helping implement the UN’s 2030 Development Agenda.

In an interview with IPS, UNFPA Deputy Executive Director (Programme) Dereje Wordofa, said “young people are at the centre of sustainable development”.

“If we do not work with, and for them, there is no way we can achieve the sustainable development goals by 2030, or UNFPA’s three transformative results,” he warned.

Through “My Body, My Life, My World!”, UNFPA is also contributing to each of the five priorities of the UN’s overall Youth Strategy, “Youth 2030”.

“If we make coherent, tailored, large-scale reforms and investments, especially in health (including sexual and reproductive health), skills development, and employment, those nations can achieve a huge demographic dividend from their healthy, empowered young populations"

Dereje Wordofa, UNFPA Deputy Executive Director (Programme)

“These are engagement, participation and advocacy, informed and healthy foundations, economic empowerment through decent work, and peace and resilience,” he pointed out.

Speaking during International Youth Day on August 11, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres complained schools are “not equipping young people with the skills they need to navigate the technological revolution.”

Last year, he also stressed the importance of young people in addressing the challenges confronting the contemporary world, including peace, impacts of climate change and growing inequalities.

“The best hope [to address these] challenges is with the new generations. We need to make sure that we are able to strongly invest in those new generations,” said Guterres, urging the international community to be fully engaged in addressing a key problem of youth unemployment.

Asked how realistic was UNFPA’s strategy in poverty-stricken communities struggling to survive on less than $1.25 a day, Wordofa told IPS: “Having lived and worked in many countries affected by poverty and deprivation, including in my own Ethiopia, I couldn’t agree with you more”

He said Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG 1) is a lynchpin for all the other SDGs, and in all sectors of development “we are contributing towards reducing poverty. I believe empowered young people will play a vital role here too”.

“At UNFPA, we firmly believe that one of the most essential routes to achieving sustainable development lies in educating and empowering young people to make decisions about their health and wellbeing, giving them the tools to take charge of their lives, to drive development, and to sustain peace”.

“We must recognize that adolescents and young people make up the majority of the population in many economically poor nations,” he declared.

“ If we make coherent, tailored, large-scale reforms and investments, especially in health (including sexual and reproductive health), skills development, and employment, those nations can achieve a huge demographic dividend from their healthy, empowered young populations,’ said Wordofa, who earlier served as the International Regional Director, Eastern and Southern Africa, at SOS Children’s Villages and Regional Director for Africa at the American Friends Service Committee.

In this context, he pointed out that UNFPA’s “My Body, My Life, My World!” is a human-centric approach: “we are emphasizing how all the different issues affecting adolescents and youth today are interlinked and inseparable”.

“For example, without rights and choices over their bodies, it is not possible for young people to have full control over their lives and actively shape their communities and end poverty. So we must continue to address the complex determinants that affect young people’s health and wellbeing,” he noted.

UNFPA Deputy Executive Director (Programme) Dereje Wordofa.

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: How best would you describe the UNFPA’s new strategy on adolescents and youth?

WORDOFA: UNFPA’s vision is to create a world where every young person can make their own choices and enjoy their rights. The strategy titled “My body, my life, my world!” is our new rallying cry for every young person to have the knowledge and power to make informed choices about their bodies and lives, and to participate in transforming their world.

The strategy puts young people – their talents, hopes, perspectives and unique needs – at the very centre of sustainable development, and offers a new approach to collaborate with, invest in, and champion young people around the world. It encompasses everything that was called for and promised by world leaders at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) back in 1994 in Cairo.

“My Body, My Life, My World!” provides a new narrative for all of UNFPA’s youth work, building on the organization’s strategic plan and the UN’s “Youth 2030” strategy, and putting young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights at the core of what we do both in development and humanitarian settings.

In addition to the crucial need for young people to enjoy their right to sexual and reproductive health, the strategy also includes their fundamental right to participate in sustainable development, humanitarian action and sustaining peace.

By working with and for young people, we will deliver across the three spheres that matter to them – their body, life, and world. This will be essential if we are to finally fulfil the promise of the ICPD of rights and choices for all adolescents and youth.

IPS: Are you working on a deadline for its implementation?

WORDOFA: UNFPA seeks to achieve its three transformative goals by 2030; namely zero unmet need for family planning, zero maternal deaths and zero violence and harmful practices against women and girls. “My Body, My Life, My World!” will be a key accelerator to achieving these three goals.

IPS: Do you think the world’s 1.8 billion adolescents and youth now remain largely marginalized in decisions relating to reproductive health, marriage and child-bearing?

WORDOFA: Yes! It is a sad fact that far too many young people are still a long way from being able to exercise their reproductive rights, despite being promised them by world leaders twenty-five years ago at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo.

The numbers are staggering: 21 per cent of girls worldwide are married before age 18. Tens of thousands of girls get married every day. And every day in developing countries, 20,000 girls under age 18 give birth: this amounts to 7.3 million births a year.

The choices young people make—or are forced to make—determine their lives now, their futures as adults, and the health of future generations. A single choice, for example, to stay in school may protect against early pregnancy, child marriage, gender-based violence and HIV infection.

Yet many young people will not be able to make that choice. Poverty, humanitarian crises, race, ethnicity, gender and cultural traditions are just some of the barriers that may stand in the way.

IPS: What role can civil society play in promoting the Youth strategy in the developing world?

WORDOFA: Making a real difference in the lives of young people rests on shared leadership and shared responsibility. Youth-led and youth-serving organizations, governments, community leaders, UN entities, civil society, academia, the private sector and the media all have essential roles to play.

As UNFPA, we take pride in being a trusted ally and partner for youth leaders, organizations and networks. We systematically invest in strengthening national and regional youth-led networks, and pioneering models for youth leadership and participation in many countries.

Adolescents and youth both benefit from our programmes, and as our close partners, offer vital contributions to shaping their design and implementation.

For “My Body, My Life, My World!” we are excited to strengthen and broaden our partnership base and collaborate with youth-led organizations, community-based organizations, but also iNGOs, to scale up joint implementation efforts with young people.

IPS: How will your young professional network – the Tangerines – described as the first of its kind in the UN system, be deployed in promoting your new strategy?

WORDOFA: The Tangerines played an important role in formulating and shaping the strategy. We will continue to provide a safe space and promote an organizational culture that encourages young professionals within UNFPA to be closely linked to the implementation of “My Body, My Life, My World!” We know we need to start by walking the talk.

At the conception phase of the Strategy, we conducted a global survey with Tangerine members and consulted with our Executive Director, Dr Natalia Kanem, and the UN Secretary General’s Youth Envoy to explore how UNFPA was delivering for young people and what could be strengthened.

We are planning to collaborate closely with the Tangerines for the global launch and promotion of the Strategy, as well as when thinking about how we can reach young people and operationalize the strategy.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/a-key-role-for-1-8-billion-youth-in-uns-2030-development-agenda/feed/0Are Jair Messias Bolsonaro and Donald John Trump a Menace to the Planet?http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/jair-messias-bolsonaro-donald-john-trump-menace-planet/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jair-messias-bolsonaro-donald-john-trump-menace-planet
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/jair-messias-bolsonaro-donald-john-trump-menace-planet/#respondTue, 13 Aug 2019 19:10:27 +0000Jan Lundiushttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162844We live in different worlds. The ones of friends, family and work colleagues. Worlds which are overshadowed by other, much bigger ones. Global spheres of international finance, politics, climate change, etc., contexts that might threaten our smaller circle of relationships; our family, our income, our general wellbeing, in short – our entire existence. However, even […]

We live in different worlds. The ones of friends, family and work colleagues. Worlds which are overshadowed by other, much bigger ones. Global spheres of international finance, politics, climate change, etc., contexts that might threaten our smaller circle of relationships; our family, our income, our general wellbeing, in short – our entire existence. However, even at those levels there exist small circles of acquaintances and associates able to make decisions that affect the entire humankind. Let me take one example – the regimes of U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro, which are menacing our global natural habitat.

Ten years ago, I flew across the Amazon Jungle, amazed by its immensity though also alarmed by scares where thick greenery had been cleared away and substituted by dismal remains of dead trees, or dry cattle pastures and soy plantations. Logging and mining are the greatest dangers to Amazonia since its exposed soil is generally old, weathered, acidic, infertile, and subject to compaction from intense solar radiation.

Within the framework of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thousands of scientists and other experts write and review reports informing the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an endevour involving the governments of more than 120 countries. The IPCC, which in 2007 was rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize, was established in 1988. The U.S. Government was the main force for making the IPCC an autonomous intergovernmental body supporting a consensus between the participating nations.

At regular intervals, the IPCC presents comprehensive assessments on climate change and its impact on ecology, human society, and food production. In 2013, one of its reports declared that:

Climate change is occurring, it is caused largely by human activities and poses significant risks for – and in many cases is already affecting – a broad range of human and natural systems. […] Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Human influence on the climate system is clear. 1

Nevertheless, several influential world leaders and their sycophants refuse to accept unequivocal findings and warnings issued by the IPCC, among them the U.S. president, who continues to make badly informed, even mind-numbing statements, like:

My uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years, Dr. John Trump, and I didn’t talk to him about this particular subject [climate change], but I have a natural instinct for science, and I will say that you have scientists on both sides of the picture. […] Everything I want and everything I have is clean. Clean is very important — water, air. I want absolutely crystal clear water and I want the cleanest air on the planet and our air now is cleaner than it’s ever been. Very important to me. What I’m not willing to do is sacrifice the economic well-being of our country for something that nobody really knows. 2

While speaking about any scientific issue he does not know much about it is common that President Trump refers to ”Uncle John”, to whom he quite obviously did not speak about climate change, since Dr. Trump was a professor of engineering at a time when the phenomenon was hardly spoken of outside limited expert groups. 3 Donald Trump likes to refer to John Trump, who died in 1985, arguing that ”Dr John Trump at MIT, good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart”. The current U.S. president assumes he has superior genes as well:

I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain, my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff. […] I’m a gene believer. Do you believe in the gene thing? I mean I do. I have great genes and all that stuff, which I’m a believer in. 4

On 8 August this year, the IPCC launched a 1,200-page Special Report of Climate Change and Land, highlighting that human activities directly affect more than 70 percent of earth´s ice-free land. A quarter of this land is already severely degraded. Five hundred million people are currently living in areas experiencing desertification, while agriculture continous to use 70 percent of the earth´s freshwater. Our planet´s vegetation currently absorbs 30 percent of CO2 emissions, which contribute to global warming, but the ongoing clearing of forests increases average world temperature at an alarming speed, while access to freshwater is constantly decreasing. During the last decades, the average temperature has increased by 1,53 oC. 5 This critical situation could probably be reversed if agricultural and forestry methods are drastically changed from a present state of overexploitation, characterized by excessive use of pesticides, nitrogenous fertilizers, mechanization, wasteful irrigation and other harmful practicies favoured by large-scale agricultural producers.

Let me return to Jair Messias Bolsonaro and his acolytes. The world’s largest tropical rainforest is currently under a lethal threat from President Bolsonaro, a powerful supporter of large-scale agribusiness he is complaining about foreign pressure to safeguard Amazonia. Bolsonaro is following in Trump´s footsteps, for example by threatening to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. His Minister of Foreign Affairs has called global warming a plot by “cultural Marxists”, while Bolsonaro declares that ”Amazonas is ours and ours alone”, accusing ”foreign NGOs” of intending to steal natural resources of its rainforest from Brazil and hand it over to European exploiters. Furthermore, he accuses indigenous groups of keeping Amazonia away from the Brazilian people, trying to maintain it ”at a prehistoric level”. Accordingly, Bolsonaro has withdrawn governmental support to FUNAI, the National Indian Foundation, which up until now has carried out policies related to indigenous people. He has also eliminated the Climate Change Division of the Ministry of Environment, as well as two departments that dealt with climate change mitigation and deforestation.

On 6 August this year, the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) reported that 4,700 km2 of the jungle had been cleared since Bolsonaro´s inauguration on January 1st and in June alone, deforestation had been 278 percent more than for the same month in 2018. Bolsonaro immediately fired INPE´s director, Ricardo Galvao, accusing him of being in the service of ”some NGO´s” and that he himself would not fall victim to any ”environmental psychosis”. 6

Bolsonaro appears to belong to the same breed as President Trump. He behaves like a narcissist obsessed by his own worth and righteousness. Bolsonaro´s regime is already after half a year threatening not only Brazil with a moral and ecological meltdown, but the entire world as well. On March 28th The Economist described Bolsanero´s government as being in a state of monumental confusion. Apart from the economic team, it is a warring assortment of retired generals, mid-ranking politicians, evangelical Protestants and far right ideologues. “Nobody knows where he´s going, what´s the course he´s setting,” says Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former president, of Mr Bolsanaro. “He goes forward then back, all the time.” 7

Despots like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong have proved that a single man and his acolytes can bring death, hardship, and devastation to millions of people. Remembering men like those and learning about the views, aspirations, and actions of people like Trump and Bolsonaro make it imperative for all of us to become aware of the craziness of these two leaders and the fatal consequences of their actions. All humanity must now join forces to support national and global efforts to save our planet.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/jair-messias-bolsonaro-donald-john-trump-menace-planet/feed/0Revitalizing Indigenous Languages Is Criticalhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/revitalizing-indigenous-languages-critical/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=revitalizing-indigenous-languages-critical
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/revitalizing-indigenous-languages-critical/#respondMon, 12 Aug 2019 11:05:21 +0000Lakshi De Vass Gunawardenahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162829Being fluent in a world language is a desirable skill in modern day society. However, some languages are suffering and in danger of extinction — namely those of the indigenous peoples. “There are between 6,000 and 7,000 world languages in the world today,” Brian Keane, rapporteur of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues said in […]

Being fluent in a world language is a desirable skill in modern day society. However, some languages are suffering and in danger of extinction — namely those of the indigenous peoples.

“There are between 6,000 and 7,000 world languages in the world today,” Brian Keane, rapporteur of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues said in his keynote speech last week, revealing that half of them are expected to go extinct by 2100. As a result, more than 50% of the worlds indigenous peoples are in danger of losing their language.

“You can’t preserve or protect or revitalize indigenous languages in a vacuum- they’re related to all of the other rights of indigenous peoples, principally the right to self-determination,” Keane told IPS, adding that the Permanent Forum tries to highlight all of these rights, citing several branches to assist indigenous rights.

Asked what role the Forum will play, he said: “Our role is trying to move countries forward when implementing rights and outlining declarations.” Keane said, stressing that only when indigenous peoples are able to practice self-determination, and be able to live on their ancestral territories, “can we truly protect the languages”.

The annual commemoration of World Indigenous Peoples Day took place August 9 and was organized by the Indigenous Peoples and Development Branch of the Secretariat of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The event featured two panels, guest speakers, and performances.

Today, there are about 370 million indigenous peoples worldwide, making up about 5% of the population. However, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has predicted that, by the end of this century, between 50-90% of indigenous languages will perish.

Credit: UN

Indigenous language is fading as a result of land seizures, forced assimilation, conflicts, climate change, development projects, and a critical gap of the language being passed on to the next generation, attributed to a sense of fear or shame.

It has been noted that at least one indigenous language has been dying every 2 weeks and will continue to do so, if action is not taken.

It is an issue so concerning that it is reaching all corners of the world.

There are between 6,000 and 7,000 world languages in the world today, half of them are expected to go extinct by 2100. As a result, more than 50% of the worlds indigenous peoples are in danger of losing their language

Brian Keane, rapporteur of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

“We need to create reading materials, compile tales, stories and myths from the indigenous peoples.” María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, President of the UN General Assembly declared, adding that languages are alive “as long as we speak them”.

“With every language that disappears, the world loses a wealth of traditional knowledge and cultural heritage.” UN Secretary General António Guterres declared in an official statement, adding that education has a pivotal role to play in ensuring that indigenous peoples can enjoy and preserve their culture and identity, and that intercultural and multi-lingual education will be necessary to prevent irreparable loss.

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada concluded in his official statement: “On behalf of the Government of Canada, I encourage everyone to learn more about the cultures and languages of Indigenous peoples, here in Canada and around the world,”

However, there are several initiatives in place to help foster indigenous language, such as the use of digital technology.

“Over the last 5 or 6 years we’ve really seen a boom in seeing indigenous languages online,” Eddie Avila, Director of Rising Voices said in his keynote speech, highlighting Wikipedia, emoticons, and users tweeting on Twitter in their native tongue.

“It’s really a message of do it yourself,” he added, but pointed out that it is ultimately the young people behind the tools who are critical, as well as academic researchers and policymakers.

Avila described designated spaces for young indigenous peoples to gather and engage in discussions.

“I think the non- indigenous youth can kind of encourage their classmates and other friends who may speak an indigenous language that it is okay to be multilingual, bilingual” Avila told IPS.

He said things are slowly changing compared to the past where there was a sense of shame to speak an indigenous language. He also stressed the importance of celebrating those differences but also recognizing the value of maintaining those roots.

He went on to note that in a city like New York, it is very easy to see the diversity and celebrate that, but added it is not always that way around the world, again tracing back to the importance of using language online, such as Duolingo and social media.

“And I think Rising Voices, we’re trying to support communities of indigenous languages, and we want to leverage technology to encourage new speakers, to promote the language, and to show that it is very functional on something as modern as the Internet, Avila declared.

There are several initiatives in place to foster sustainable development– and the Global Geodetic Reference governance frame is one that has proved effective.

“This proposed governance framework, the establishment of a Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence (GGCE), will strengthen all Member States – as global geodesy is fundamental to sustainable development,” Anne Jørgensen, Senior Strategic Communications Advisor for the UN Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM), told IPS.

“Global warming is the defining issue of our time,” Anne Gueguen, Deputy Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations said at a panel discussion August 6 organized by the UN-GGIM and the Subcommittee on Geodesy.

“We are in a race against time for the survival of human life on the planet as we know it, and that this global challenge can only be met by universal global efforts.”

Since its inception, the UN-GGIM has recognized the growing demand for more precise positioning services, the economic importance of a global geodetic reference frame and the need to improve the global cooperation within geodesy, according to its website.

UN-GGIM created a Working Group for a Global Geodetic Reference Frame (GGRF), which formulated and facilitated a draft resolution for a Global Geodetic Reference Frame (GGRF), adopted by UN-GGIM in July 2014 and the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in November 2014.

On 26 February 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on Global Geodetic Reference Frame for Sustainable Development that was led by the Republic of Fiji.

The Global Geodetic Reference Frame (GGRF) is a generic term describing the framework which allows users to precisely determine and express locations on the Earth, as well as to quantify changes of the Earth in space and time

Data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Gravity Recovery and Climate revealed that Greenland alone lost an average of 286 billion tons of ice per year between the years 1993 and 2016, while Antarctica lost about 127 billion tons of ice per year during the same time frame, and that the rate of Antarctica ice mass loss has tripled in the last decade.

Record high temperatures, mass rainfall, and rising sea levels are occurring at unparalleled rates as well.

The Geodetic framework seeks to support the increasing demand for positioning, navigation, timing, mapping, and geoscience applications, and thus is an irreplaceable asset for reliable information on changes on Earth such as natural disaster management, rising sea levels, climate change, and information for decision-makers.

The UN- GGIM hopes to establish a Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence as well, in order to support the frame and cites that it will “act as a GGRF operational hub” that will support the objectives of the UN- GGIM – to enhance global cooperation, provide technical assistance and capacity building.

However, there are challenges surrounding the framework itself, such as degradation, a lack of open data sharing, and halted development and maintenance due to a lack of global coordination.

“Open data sharing is fundamental to science applications and also alignment to the global reference frame,” Zuheir Altamimi, Researcher at the Institut National de l’Information Géographique et Forestière (IGN) said during the panel discussion, pointing to a map that highlighted data gaps in Africa, East and South East Asia, and South America.

“It means that data is not shared,” Altamimi noted, concluding “we need to share data in order to maintain the global geodetic framework.”

“Global geodesy lacks global coordination.” Laila Løvhøiden, Deputy Director at Kartverket added. To tackle this, the UN GGIM and Subcommittee has proposed solutions, including a revised position paper and the Geodetic Centre.

“The Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence would provide the coordinating role that is key to creating synergy,” Francisco Javier Medina Parra, Director of the Geodetic Framework at National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) added.

People at home can also help sustain the framework. “There’s also a need for the broader community to communicate to policymakers and the political class how much we actually rely on these things in our day to day lives,”

Gary Johnston, Co- Chair of the UN- GGIM Subcommittee on Geodesy told IPS, that no one country can do this alone, and that we need all countries and member states to contribute “in any way that they can, and concluded that everyone has a role and everyone can benefit from it.”

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/global-geodetic-framework-helps-monitor-natural-disasters-rising-sea-levels/feed/0The Nairobi Summit – Towards a Watershed Momenthttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/nairobi-summit-towards-watershed-moment/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nairobi-summit-towards-watershed-moment
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/nairobi-summit-towards-watershed-moment/#respondThu, 08 Aug 2019 16:03:21 +0000Dr. Ida Odingahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162779In 2019 a female scientist created an algorithm that gave the world the first ever images of a black hole. Working with a team of astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and engineers, a young woman led the development of a computer program that in her own words enabled them to “achieve something once thought impossible.” During this […]

In 2019 a female scientist created an algorithm that gave the world the first ever images of a black hole. Working with a team of astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and engineers, a young woman led the development of a computer program that in her own words enabled them to “achieve something once thought impossible.”

Photo: Heshimi Kenya

During this same year, over 200 million women in developing countries will not have access to effective methods of contraception to delay or avoid pregnancy. Approximately 830 women a day will die during pregnancy or childbirth from preventable causes. And sexual and gender based violence including harmful practices like early marriage and female genital mutilation, will still plague millions of girls and young women. Girls and women denied basic human rights and robbed of their potential to achieve the impossible.

In 1994, the visionary Programme of Action was agreed to by 179 governments at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt. The Programme of Action recognized that reproductive health and rights, as well as women’s empowerment and gender equality, are cornerstones of healthy robust societies that promote the well-being of populations and economic and social development of nations. Since ICPD, governments, civil society, youth networks have all worked towards decreasing maternal deaths, eliminating harmful practices and promoting gender equality.

The global community is now gearing up to mark 25 years since the historic ICPD through the Nairobi Summit on the International Conference on Population and Development, ICPD25 which will be held from 12-14 November 2019 under the theme “Accelerating the Promise”.

I am proud that my country Kenya, will be hosting this important Summit, which is aimed at mobilizing the political will, financial commitment and community support we need to fully realize the ICPD Programme of Action.

Indeed, by the time we leave Nairobi, we must ensure that everyone has agreed to play their part in reaching zero unmet need for family planning information and services, zero preventable maternal deaths, and zero sexual and gender-based violence and harmful practices against girls and women. Evidence shows that the benefits that would accrue from fulfilling the ICDP agenda would be far reaching in transforming lives and improving the wellbeing of families, communities, and nations.

Dr. Ida Odinga, EGH

In Kenya, significant progress in health care has been made with Universal Health Coverage(UHC) a top priority for the Government. Thanks to the leadership, passion and commitment of the First Lady of Kenya, Ms Margret Kenyatta through her Beyond Zero campaign there has been a significant drop in maternal and child mortality. We have to now go for zero deaths. Reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health is key to achieving UHC.

High rates of teenage pregnancy, take girls out of school and compromises their health. Young people face stark challenges in employment as 1,000,000 people enter a labor force that can only absorb 150,000 new entrants. Access to health services and information, school retention and quality education will help these young girls stay in school and lead healthy lives. These are among the issues that the Summit will address.

However, in order for the Nairobi Summit to be a game changer, we need to speak for those that can’t speak, speak for those who are not heard and to add our voices to those who continue to work for sexual and reproductive rights for all. We must reaffirm our commitments to the ICPD goals and Agenda 2030. We must absorb the lessons learned over the last 25 years and do better.

I am delighted that my country is partnering with UNFPA and the Government of Denmark to host the Nairobi Summit and reaffirm the global commitment to ICPD. This is a watershed moment as we are a mere 10 years away from our commitment to fulfill the SDGs.

I look forward to seeing all the participants in Nairobi and hope everyone will follow the proceedings of the Nairobi Summit and learn how we can all play a role in bringing about change and keeping the promise of ICPD. Ensuring that all women and girls can reach for the stars and achieve the impossible.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/nairobi-summit-towards-watershed-moment/feed/0Domestic Violence and the Role of Educationhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/domestic-violence-role-education/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=domestic-violence-role-education
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/domestic-violence-role-education/#respondThu, 08 Aug 2019 11:32:36 +0000Jan Lundiushttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162767Trying to teach and inspire youngsters is a daunting task. Many teachers tend to suffer from a harrowing, bad conscience, obliged as they are to follow routines, rules, and regulations set down by their employers while knowing that these are difficult to apply and provide with desired results. Worst is a nagging feeling of inability […]

Trying to teach and inspire youngsters is a daunting task. Many teachers tend to suffer from a harrowing, bad conscience, obliged as they are to follow routines, rules, and regulations set down by their employers while knowing that these are difficult to apply and provide with desired results. Worst is a nagging feeling of inability to reach out to the students. Most teachers want their pupils to be good learners, critically thinking individuals who feel gratified and keen to change things for the better.

Occasionally, I return to my original profession as a high school teacher. Long intervals between such experiences make it possible for me to perceive attitude changes among students and myself. When I two years ago had another stint of teaching in Sweden I found a new obstacle to students´ interest in direct social interaction and learning – smartphones. In many schools, they are now banned from lessons, though not from the one where I was working. Many of the teachers were quite young and belonged to the mobile phone generation. They explained that smartphones had become an essential part of their lives and instead of being banned they ought to be integrated into education.

Smartphones infringed on many students´ attention. Several felt forced to look at them over and over again – texting, checking things on the web, playing games, doing selfies, nothing of which had anything to do with school work. I found some of my pupils to be incapable of concentrating on a specific task, listening to me or even watch a movie for more than five minutes. No matter how exciting they originally had found the film, they soon felt an uncontrollable urge to switch on and check their smartphones. When I asked what could be so extremely urgent, they generally lied and said it was their mother calling, or that they had been alerted about some kind of emergency. However, I soon found out that several of the girls were checking out Kim Kardashian´s website, while boys often had become absorbed in some inane game, like directing a rolling ball through meandering tunnels.

Before my latest teaching experience, I had been happily unaware of Kim Kardashian´s influence on women’s´ lives, but now I know that she and other members of her family have a combined Instagram-following of more than 536 million and that Keeping Up With the Kardashians, a reality television series following the lives of Kim and her four sisters, is running on its 16th season. However, Kim´s coffee table book Selfish from 2015, presenting selfies she had taken over the time of nine years, ”flopped” – selling ”only” 125,000 copies. Apart from ”acting” in a reality show and posting entries on Instagram, Kim has a line of clothing and other items mirroring the Kardashians´”aspirational and over-the-top lifestyle”, celebrating a body image of slim waists, large breasts and hips, ”a hyper-feminised, high-glamour look that seems calculated to entice the male gaze, sexy rather than being fashionable,”1 while Keeping Up With the Kardashians pays hommage to a fake existence of staged worries, petty concerns and idle gossip, where ”having fun” equals expensive activities at luxury resorts and spas, or the planning of and participation in clamorous, superficial and glittering parties. Kim Kardashian´s influence cannot be ignored, her fame and wealth make even a notoriously bad listener like U.S. President Donald J. Trump willing to lend her an ear.

The Kardashian style, as the family´s approach to life is called in the TV-series, is reflected by an app that was immensely popular among many of my female students. It is a role-playing game in which participants are invited to impersonate an ”up-and-coming” Hollywood celebrity climbing a status ladder passing ”levels of stardom” from E to A, completing tasks like posing for magazines and going on dates. This while the more enterprising among my school-tired male students were engaged in complicated and violent role-playing video games like Grand Theft Auto V and Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds. It felt as if the entire school system was under a massive attack from commercial interests, which apart from being mind-numbing are cementing prejudicial gender roles.

Antiquated attitudes about gender roles among several of my students made me doubt if they had participated in an obligatory subject of the Swedish elementary school system – home and consumer knowledge, which for several years train boys and girls in managing household chores and childcare. No one who has received that training might claim to be unknowledgeable about elementary household chores. Furthermore, in Swedish schools, both boys and girls are trained in needlework, as well as metal- and wood handicraft. I find this approach highly commendable as it benefits a sense of responsibility and gender equality. However, these admirable gains may be counteracted by mass communication supporting bigoted gender roles that limit and predispose abilities and perspective of both girls and boys.

If human development is to be achieved, the best resolution of any nation would be to promote general wellbeing and prosperity by providing effective and affordable health care and education to all of its citizens, irrespective of gender, wealth and social standing. Furthermore, such education has to benefit gender equality and encourage personal accountability. Most of my students were well aware of the concept of human rights, i.e. their own rights, though they were often unaware that this concept includes human duties, i.e. concerns about the welfare of others.

I recently came to think of this after reading a well-written Italian novel Sei Mia: Un amore violento by Eleonora de Nardis, which describes the suffering of a mother of three under the brutal and degrading regime of a spouse, who furthermore is married to and sharing a family with another woman. I am convinced that this novel illustrated the suffering of women all around the world. Women who on their own carry the entire responsibility of running a home and taking care of children engendered together with an irresponsible man, who furthermore, as in Sei Mia, abuses, maltreats and controls the mother of his own offspring under the feeble pretext that this is his right as a man, assuming that his gender excludes him from cooking, childcare, and expressions of emotional care for his family, as well as compassion and responsibility for the wellbeing of others.

It is scientifically proven that domestic violence generally occurs when an abuser assumes he is entitled to behave as a selfish tyrant. A male perpetrator of domestic violence is often supported, accepted and even justified by his socio-cultural upbringing and ambiance. A background and attitude that tends to be shared by his victims, who are unlikely to report this kind of violence to authorities that often condone the abuser´s behaviour. Several legal systems make a difference between ”domestic” and ”common” law and it is quite common that it is up to a victim to report domestic violence, under the pretext that this cannot be done by an ”outsider”. An absurdity considering that it often proves to be fatal for a victim to even consider accusing a violent, capricious abuser who exercises total control and to whom she is entirely dependent.2 Such a state of affairs produces an intergenerational cycle of abuse in children and other family members, who are brought up to consider such abuse as acceptable. Attitudes that may only be changed through an obligatory education, which breaks down gender inequalities. Efforts that have to be combined with the strict application of laws penalizing domestic abuse, while safeguarding male responsibilities for support of their households, making it obligatory to participate in the care of their children, for example by guaranteeing not only maternal leave from work but paternal leave as well.

There is a direct correlation between a country´s level of gender equality and rates of domestic violence, where countries with less gender equality experience higher rates of domestic abuse. Domestic violence is an abominable crime that not only cripples the ability for victims to participate ihe creation of genern tal, social wellbeing, it also tends to destroy or frustrate children´s development as compassionate and progressive human beings. Apparently, has Swedish education had a beneficial impact on gender equality and when it comes to the condemnation of domestic violence. However, I hope the impact of stereotyped gender roles propagated by trendsetters and some influential video game developers will not be able to diminish such achievements.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/domestic-violence-role-education/feed/0Your Life or Your Freedom? The Ultimate Price to Defend the Environmenthttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/life-freedom-ultimate-price-defend-environment/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=life-freedom-ultimate-price-defend-environment
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/life-freedom-ultimate-price-defend-environment/#respondThu, 08 Aug 2019 11:02:22 +0000Natalia Gomezhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162764For the family of indigenous Guatemalan activist Jorge Juc, the announcement last week by US President Donald Trump of an agreement declaring Guatemala a “safe third country” could not be more bitterly ironic. The deal requires central American migrants who cross into Guatemala on their way to the US to apply for protections in Guatemala […]

For the family of indigenous Guatemalan activist Jorge Juc, the announcement last week by US President Donald Trump of an agreement declaring Guatemala a “safe third country” could not be more bitterly ironic.

The deal requires central American migrants who cross into Guatemala on their way to the US to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the US border – a move immigration advocates have called cruel and unlawful.

Juc, a 77-year-old indigenous Maya Q’eqchi community leader, was killed in a machete attack in July as he tended his cornfield. He was president of the village chapter of the Campesino Development Committee (CODECA), a national indigenous-led social movement fighting for indigenous, land and environmental rights that are being threatened by harmful mining projects.

For Guatemalan human rights defenders, particularly those who are indigenous – as for migrants and other Guatemalans – the words “Guatemala” and “safe” could never belong in the same sentence.

Their country is considered among the world’s deadliest for environmental activists, particularly those from indigenous communities fighting to protect their land, lives, livehoods and rights.

A new report by independent rights watchdog Global Witness – coming just days before the commemoration of International Day for the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9 – found that murders of land defenders in Guatemala skyrocketed by a shocking 500% between 2017 and last year, making it the deadliest country per capita for such activists. And most of the land and environmental activists killed were indigenous – many, leaders of the country’s campesino (peasant farmer) movement.

Four CODECA-affiliated community leaders were killed last month alone, all in Guatemala’s western Izabal department. Izabal is home to mining operations, oil palm plantations and the Maya Q’eqchi’ community, which has suffered decades of displacement as a result.

Isidro Perez and Melesio Ramirez were murdered on July 5 when armed men opened fire on a land rights protest. Julio Ramirez was shot multiple times a week later and died of his injuries.

Last December, the bodies of brothers Neri And Domingo Esteban Pedro – both vocal opponents of a hydroelectric power project in the Ixquisis region of western Guatemala – were found slumped on the banks of the Yal Witz River near the San Andres hydroelectric with bullets in their heads.

In Guatemala – as across Latin America – when indigenous rights defenders are not murdered for activism, they are criminalized and imprisoned on trumped up charges.

A 2018 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People about the rise in criminalization of indigenous Guatemalans found that people who filed legal petitions to demand protection of their rights are being falsely charged with crimes like robbery, kidnap and even murder. In a number of cases, the report claimed, companies or landlords allegedly colluded with local prosecutors and judges.

Earlier this year, The prestigious Goldman Prize – widely regarded as the environmental Nobel Prize – was awarded to indigenous Mapuche leader, Alberto Curamil, who was incarcerated after leading his community to stop two hydropower projects threatening the sacred Cautin River valley in Chile.

Ironically, while Chile preparing to host the world’s largest environmental summit – the UN’s climate change conference COP25 – in December, it has yet to sign the Escazú Agreement, a historic, regional treaty committing Latin American and Caribbean nations to protecting environmental defenders and their rights.

Under the agreement, states commit to ensure a safe environment for defenders to act, take appropriate and effective measures to recognize and protect their rights, and take measures to prevent, investigate and prosecute attacks against environmental defenders.

Guatemala’s crisis for indigenous environmental defenders stretches back decades, the Global Witness report explains. New economic integration policies that emerged after the end of long running civil war in 1996 led to a boom in private and foreign investment.

As a result, large swatches of land were handed out to plantation, mining and hydropower companies, ushering in a wave of forced and violent evictions, particularly in indigenous areas.

A joint 2019 report by Guatemala’s Human Rights Ombudsman and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found that industrial projects were routinely being imposed on communities without their consent.

Regardless of risking their lives and freedoms, environmental defenders continue to inspire us every day step up and act. Governments around the world should increase their commitment to the protection of defenders and ensure that they can develop their role without risking their life and integrity.

Specially in Latin America, the most dangerous region for defenders in the world, environmental activists have a fundamental role representing the voices of millions of people suffering the pollution of their waters, the lost of their forests and violations to their rights to health and to life.

Just in the last years two Goldman Prize recipients from this region have been murdered. Bertha Caceres an indigenous leader working to protect her community in Honduras and Isidro Baldonegro an indigenous activist who worked for the protection of forest in the Sierra Madre en Mexico.

The violent reality faced by environmental defenders in Latin America has already made some States in the region to commit to their protection. On 4 March 2018, 24 states from Latin America and the Caribbean adopted the agreement that responds to the region’s need for a stronger environmental democracy and was inspired by the Aarhus Convention adopted in Europe in 1998, rests on three substantial pillars for environmental democracy: the right to access information, the right of participation and the right to access justice in environmental matters and adds a new pillar with a regime of protection for environmental human rights defenders.

Under Escazú, States commit to ensure a safe environment for defenders to act, take appropriate and effective measures to recognize and protect their rights, and take measures to prevent, investigate and prosecute attacks against environmental defenders.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/life-freedom-ultimate-price-defend-environment/feed/0International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples 2019http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/international-day-worlds-indigenous-peoples-2019/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=international-day-worlds-indigenous-peoples-2019
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/international-day-worlds-indigenous-peoples-2019/#respondWed, 07 Aug 2019 10:58:52 +0000IPS World Deskhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162747There are an estimated 370 million indigenous people in the world, living across 90 countries. They live in all geographic regions and represent 5000 different cultures. These people are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to others yet are being forced to give up their ways of life. In Latin America, […]

There are an estimated 370 million indigenous people in the world, living across 90 countries. They live in all geographic regions and represent 5000 different cultures. These people are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to others yet are being forced to give up their ways of life.

In Latin America, for example, 40% of all indigenous peoples now live in urban areas – they account for 80% of those populations in some countries. Globally, they represent 5% of the world’s population, yet account for 15% of all of those in poverty.

Indigenous people speak an overwhelming majority of the world’s 7000 languages. These languages are extensive and complex systems of knowledge that are central to their identity, their cultures, worldviews and expressions of self-determination.

Tragically, many indigenous languages are under threat, as we lose one of these languages every two weeks. According to UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 230 languages went extinct between 1950 and 2010. Today, a third of the world’s languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers left.

The 9th of August commemorates the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. This year’s theme will focus on the current situation of indigenous languages around the world, aiming to highlight the critical need to revitalize, preserve and promote indigenous languages to safeguard the life of indigenous cultures for future generations.

Over 100 years ago a little brown passenger pigeon named Martha died in the Cincinnati Zoo. She was the last of her breed. Just like that, in an instant, a bird species that had once numbered in the billions was wiped out forever.

I’ve been researching Martha and other endangered species for the past five years in my efforts to write a book that children can relate to on the importance of conservation and environmental protection.

Greg Benchwick

What’s become perfectly clear to me as I wrote and rewrote my new book, is that if we don’t educate our children on the importance of conservation today, we are likely to experience a catastrophic loss of biodiversity that will alter the course of human and natural history forever.

Think about how the lessons of Martha connect with our current disastrous state of affairs. Martha lived through a seminal time in American history that included the expansion West, industrialization, the Gilded Age (an age of decadent consumption), huge population growth, several wars (nothing new there), and the heady legacy of Manifest Destiny.

In the US, we burned coal, we raped the land, we expanded our economies, and we became, before long, the greatest industrial empire the world had ever seen. “Martha is a remarkable tale set against a vibrant historic backdrop. The story masterfully weaves together true historic elements and parables on conservation and environmentalism in a magical world that young readers will love exploring. Truly a must read for children and adults alike, this book is a wake up call. If we don't act now, we risk losing close to half of our global biodiversity by 2050. Our planet is in crisis. In the tradition of Dr. Seuss's 'The Lorax,' this new book by Greg Benchwick should be taught the world over. We can only hope it's not too late." - Alan Miller, RT World Bank Principal Climate Change Specialist and globally recognized expert on environmentalism, climate change and conservation.

But at what cost?

Facing habitat loss and other environmental impacts, passenger pigeons began to drop like flies. In just a few short decades, the bird flocks that had once stretched for miles across the American Heartland as they made their northern migration, were no more.

Our children need to know the story of Martha. They need to know the story of George the Snail, who died in Hawaii at the ripe old age of 14 earlier this year, and was the last Achatinella apexfulva snail on the planet. They need to know the story of the Dodo and how scientists are working today to restore coral reefs and protect natural habitats in its native Mauritius.

Children need to learn about the dire consequences of Planet Earth’s sixth mass extinction. At our current unchecked and unbridled rates of conspicuous consumption, pollution, habitat loss, population growth, heating oceans, rising temperatures and melting ice-caps, an estimated 1 million species could follow Martha into the history books.

An entire generation will miss out on the majesty, power and grace of wild gorillas, sea turtles, Bengal tigers and polar bears. They will miss out on swimming in the technicolor wonderlands of the Great Barrier Reef. They will miss out on the endless possibilities that our world’s insects, birds and plant life could bring to science and humanity.

In the developing world, they will miss out on much more. Climate change, species loss and environmental degradation is already triggering violent conflict and mass migration. It’s pushing children and their families to leave their homelands. It’s disrupting entire economies. This means more children go hungry, more children are forced out of an education, and more children will never get the chance to learn and grow and one day be the change we need to save planet earth.

Yes, children need to learn about these dangerous and inconvenient truths. And they need to learn about our history so we don’t repeat our mistakes.

Failing to do so puts our very existence at risk.

Think about it this way. More than 90 percent of the world’s coral reefs will die by 2050.

This is certainly bad for people that rely on fish for food. But it’s also really, really bad for our economy. With violent storms and rising sea levels, entire communities could be wiped out without the protection barrier reefs provide. Oceanic ecosystems will fall apart and coastal peoples will be forced to move.

First and foremost, we need to stop talking about the possibilities of climate and environmental disaster. We are in it!

Everyday we lose a dozen or more species, and we are still fretting about teaching subjects like climate change and conservation in public schools. In fact, more than half of US teachers do not teach climate change in their schools. I thought we had gotten past that with the Scopes Monkey Trail, but apparently not.

Second, we need teach children about history, and we need to include lessons on conservation in our art, science, reading and even mathematics lessons. Think what understanding the real social and economic facts behind Martha could teach a child about our current situation?

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to get children out in nature. This means putting the iPad down (you’re probably reading one right now), and going out for a hike in any local park or preserve. Along the way, you will probably spot dozens of species with your son or daughter, niece, nephew, or favorite student. One of these animals will probably go extinct in that child’s lifetime. Don’t they deserve better?

Greg Benchwick is the author of the new children’s book Martha. The new mid-grade chapter book is available for pre-sales today on Publishizer. When he’s not writing stories about passenger pigeons, Greg works for the United Nations Development Programme to tell the story of climate change and environmental protection, shares stories on sustainable travel for Lonely Planet, and writes about the pressing need to fund education for children living in crisis at Education Cannot Wait, a global fund for education in emergencies hosted by UNICEF.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/little-pigeon-teach-world/feed/0Boom or Bust -Education Will Determine Africa’s Transformationhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/boom-bust-education-will-determine-africas-transformation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=boom-bust-education-will-determine-africas-transformation
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/boom-bust-education-will-determine-africas-transformation/#respondFri, 02 Aug 2019 13:34:21 +0000Francis Owino and Siddharth Chatterjeehttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162684August 12, marks International Youth Day, and the theme for this year is ‘making education more relevant, equitable and inclusive’, is particularly apt for Africa. Consider this. Every 24 hours around 35,000 African youth are looking for work. The youth make up 37% of the working-age population in Africa, but 60% of the unemployed. Though […]

August 12, marks International Youth Day, and the theme for this year is ‘making education more relevant, equitable and inclusive’, is particularly apt for Africa. Consider this. Every 24 hours around 35,000 African youth are looking for work.

The youth make up 37% of the working-age population in Africa, but 60% of the unemployed. Though Africa continues to post impressive gains in education enrolment rates, challenges of access, quality and relevance of education in the continent remain formidable.

The region has the highest number of out-of-school children; four in ten learners score poorly in literacy and numeracy; and the systems are producing many graduates whose skills do not meet the workforce requirements. Estimates indicate that a dollar invested in an additional year of schooling, particularly for girls, generates earnings and health benefits of $10 in low-income countries and nearly $4 in lower-middle income countries.

By 2050, Africa will be home to about 830 million young people, meaning that at current trends, the challenge will only become tougher.

Francis Owino

In Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta pushed for education reforms to prepare the youth for a new era. The National Policy on Curriculum Reforms, whose vision is “nurturing every learner’s potential” is anchored on the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which includes education aspirations to catalyze an education and skills revolution with a greater role assigned to the Private Sector.

Clearly, the road towards achieving SDG 4 – to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all – requires bold and innovative action. This is why education must be at the heart of private sector engagement in the journey towards the SDGs.

It is also in line with the UN Secretary-General, Mr Antonio Guterres’s call for the reformed UN to make a “strategic pivot from ad-hoc, transactional partnerships to longer-term, ‘transformational’ partnerships designed for scale”. This will involve collaboration between the UN Global Compact and UN country teams to better mobilize local business communities.

To prepare Kenya’s young people to face the challenges of a rapidly changing world and to build on existing national leadership on young people, the country has joined Generation Unlimited as one of its key partners. President Uhuru Kenyatta, a global champion of Generation Unlimited, has established a high-level steering committee co-chaired by the Government and the UN to guide the implementation of Generation Unlimited in the country, as well concrete steps to attract public and private partnerships in support of its goals.

Siddharth Chatterjee

To set the Youth Agenda on a transformative trajectory, the Government approved and is set to roll out the Kenya Youth Development Policy (KYDP) (2019). This Policy is an expression of the collective commitment of concerned stakeholders to harness and optimize the strengths and opportunities that the youth present while addressing the personal and structural barriers that affect their productivity

More significantly, the policy is an outcome of a broad based consultative process that is designed to robustly address eight (8) Priority areas namely: realize a healthy and productive youth population; build qualified and competent youth workforce for sustained social economic development (farming, manufacturing); create opportunities for youth to earn decent and sustainable livelihood; develop youth talent, creativity and innovation for wealth creation; nurture value, moral, ethical generation of patriotic youth for transformative leadership; effective civic participation and representation among the youth; promote a crime free, secure, peaceful and united Kenya where no young Kenyan is left behind; and support youth engagement in environmental management for sustainable development.

This has been successfully done by the setting up of safe spaces for youth through the establishment of the 152 Youth Empowerment Centers (YECs) across the country as One Stop Shop for the youth services. They feature myriad of services to the youth such as a counselling center, an ICT Hub, indoor recreation facilities, affirmative fund desks/focal points, and outdoor game facilities. The Government’s efforts have been fully complemented by both the County Governments, the Private Sector and UN Agencies by adoption and enhancing the variety of services offered in the YECs.

The One Stop Youth Center concept, which is a product of partnerships between the UN and the Government, utilizes an integrated approach to youth development by providing youth with safe spaces in urban settings where they can meet and access information and resources critical to youth-led development including peace building, research and policy development. The model is in line with the Kenya Vision 2030 blue-print and the Big4 agenda which emphasizes on opportunity creation.

The UN in Kenya is scaling up its partnership with the Government in efforts to reform education, as reflected under the UN Development Assistance Framework’s, Pillar 2- Human Capital Development. The outcome is to ensure the continent’s education systems for future economic, technological and demographic trends.

Dr Francis O.Owino, PhD is the, Principal Secretary, Public Service and Youth. Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/boom-bust-education-will-determine-africas-transformation/feed/0Free Speech and the Hong Kong Protestshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/free-speech-hong-kong-protests/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=free-speech-hong-kong-protests
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/free-speech-hong-kong-protests/#respondTue, 30 Jul 2019 08:56:39 +0000Jan Lundiushttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162637Sometime in the summer of 1974, I was leaning against the gunwale of the ferry between Calais and Dover, watching the moonlight streaming dark waters. When I turned to the left I found that a Chinese lady also looked out over the calm sea. What she told me changed my world view. In 1950, Sweden […]

Sometime in the summer of 1974, I was leaning against the gunwale of the ferry between Calais and Dover, watching the moonlight streaming dark waters. When I turned to the left I found that a Chinese lady also looked out over the calm sea. What she told me changed my world view.

In 1950, Sweden became the first “Western” nation to acknowledge the People´s Republic of China (PRC) and during the following decades this small country came to enjoy a ”favoured status” among PRC leaders. As a young man, after reading Swedish translations of Tales from the Swamps and The journey to the West, I had become fascinated by Chinese culture. At the time, the Swedish press and many of my teachers spoke enthusiastically about the Cultural Revolution, but I did not as so many of my fellow students join the Swedish-Chinese Friendship Association with the hope of visiting China.

By the gunwale, the Chinese lady now told me: ”Most of you Europeans have a rosy view of China.” I wondered: ”How come? I don´t know much about your country.” She smiled and answered: ”The People´s Republic is not my country. I´m from Hong Kong where we are cosmopolitans, citizens of the world, not like Mainland Chinese who are isolated and indoctrinated. Their Cultural Revolution, which you seem to admire so much, is a complete disaster.” She continued:

We live in a different world, though far too close to Mainland China. My father is in charge of the police´s dog handlers. One of their tasks is to find corpses that have been washed ashore. Hundreds of trussed and mutilated bodies are by the Pearl River brought down to Hong Kong. It was worse in 1968 and 1969, but they still appear. I´ve heard that mainland Chinese are paid 15 Yuan [USD 2.50] or more for each corpse they fish up from the river. People are killed en masse. Education is neglected, cultural heritage smashed to pieces, they burn thousand-years old manuscripts and mock the elderly.

That short meeting made me suspicious of acclaims and condemnations of entire nations. After returning to Sweden I read Simon Ley´s Chinese Shadows and understood that unreserved tributes to the ”Chinese system” offered by most members of the Swedish press and authors like Snow, Myrdal, and Suyin had to be read with caution. Later on, I met Chinese dissidents at Lund University and came to realize that the Chinese lady had told me the truth. It is estimated that between 750,000 and 1.5 million people were killed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1974).1 Millions more had been persecuted and forcibly displaced, while cultural and religious sites and artifacts were deliberately destroyed.

Much has changed since then, though when I now read about Hong Kong and hundreds of thousands of protesters crowding its streets I am reminded of the meeting at the Calais-Dover ferry. Protests were triggered by a proposed bill allowing for extradition of lawbreakers from Hong Kong to Mainland China, though they are now increasingly addressing concerns about Hong Kong´s independent staus. Hong Kong´s importance within the enormous PRC is shrinking. When Great Britain in 1997 handed over Hong Kong to China it´s GDP constituted around 20 percent of PRC´s economy, while it now is less than 3 percent.2 The economic growth of PRC has been extraordinary and it is now the world´s second-largest economy with a GDP at USD13.6 trillion, after the United States at USD20.4 trillion.3 Such power and wealth inspire PRC´s increasing efforts to make its mark as a sovereign superpower – economically, politically and culturally. When Xi Jinping in 2012 became Secretary-General of China’s Communist Party he launched a vision called The Chinese Dream. During the Party´s 19th Congress in 2017, Xi Jinping declared:

The mindset of the Chinese people has changed, from passivity to taking the initiative.
[…] We should pursue the Belt and Road Initiative as a priority [making] new ground by opening China further through links running eastward and westward, across land and over sea.4

The Belt and Road Initiative has, alongside ecological awareness and anti-corruption, become Xi Jinping’s signature project. Newly constructed, or improved, roads, ports, and railways will benefit China financially and connect it more closely with the rest of the world. A new Silk Road across Asia will be complemented with sea connections via the Malacca Strait, the coasts of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and East Africa and across the Red Sea, as well as the Arctic Sea.

Hong Kong remains a key hub for investment in and out of China, though it is gradually losing its unique position, both financially and ideologically. Hong Kong has its own legal system and its civil rights include freedom of assembly and free speech. However, not all the 70 members of the territory’s Legislative Council are directly chosen by Hong Kong’s voters, most seats are occupied by pro-Beijing lawmakers.5

When Hong Kong was returned to China it was done under a principle called “one country, two systems”, meaning that it would enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defense affairs. Most people in Hong Kong are ethnic Chinese, though a majority of them do not identify themselves as such, at least not in the manner of the Government of PRC, which proclaims that all people of Chinese lineage are Chinese citizens, even after renouncing their Chinese citizenship. In his 2017 speech Xi Jinping declared:

Blood is thicker than water. […]Any separatist activity is certain to meet with the resolute opposition of the Chinese people. […] We will never allow anyone, any organization, or any political party, at any time or in any form, to separate any part of Chinese territory from China! China will never pursue development at the expense of others’ interests, but nor will China ever give up its legitimate rights and interests. No one should expect us to swallow anything that undermines our interests. […] We must rigorously protect against and take resolute measures to combat all acts of infiltration, subversion, and sabotage, as well as violent and terrorist activities, ethnic separatist activities, and religious extremist activities.6

In spite of Bejing´s insistence that it honours “one country, two systems” most Hong Kong citizens now fear that they might lose much of their autonomy. A fear fuelled by, among other concerns, the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers/publishers, who eventually re-emerged in custody in China. This affair also affected the hitherto friendly relationship between Sweden and China. One of the booksellers was namely the Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, who in 1988 came to Sweden as a twenty-five-year-old exchange student. After the massacre in Tiananmen Square, he applied for political asylum and eventually became a Swedish citizen. In 2012, Gui Minhai was one of the founders of Mighty Current, which in Hong Kong published serious sociological studies, as well as sensational stories about the debauched private lives of influential Chinese Communist leaders. In 2014, Mighty Current bought a bookstore and began to sell regime-critical literature, attracting customers from mainland China.

17 October 2015, Chinese agents broke into Gui Minhai´s summer residence in Bangkok and brought him to PRC, where he was imprisoned. Gui Minhais´s family alerted Swedish authorities but it took more than four months before Swedish representatives were allowed to visit Gui Minhai in prison. He then declared that he out of his own free will had severed his ties with Sweden and did not need any Swedish support, a statement he repeated four days later on the Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television. Seven months later, Swedish representatives were again allowed to visit Gui Minhai and he once more declined their help. However, after being transferred to house-arrest in his original hometown, Ningbo, Minhai apparently maintained contacts with Swedish authorities and when he by two Swedish diplomats in January 2018 was brought to a medical exam in Beijing (he suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) Minhai was forcibly abducted from the train by plain-clothes police officers.

It has been assumed that Chinese reluctance to release Gui Minhai, even after public confessions and the fact that he suffers from a deadly disease, might be the sensitive content of a book he was writing and planned to publish, The Collapse of Xi Jinping in 2017, which is said to contain damaging information about Xi Jinping´s private life.

Swedish activists accuse their government of a disgraceful submission under PRC´s economic power. In February this year, Sweden´s ambassador to China, Anna Lindstedt, invited Minhai´s daughter Angela Gui – who was born in Sweden, is a Swedish citizen and studies in the U.K. – to Stockholm. Lindstedt told Angela that she was going to meet with Chinese businessmen who had ”a new approach” to her father´s case. At a hotel in Stockholm Angela was offered a Chinese visa and an excellent job opportunty in PRC, apparently a means to silence her advocacy for her father´s release. Angela refused to co-operate7 and when the meeting was exposed in the press it was revealed that Lindstedt had acted without approval from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and she was eventually replaced as ambassador.

The employment of approximately 60,000 Swedes is currently, directly or indirectly, dependent on Chinese companies. During the first half of 2018, Chinese companies invested USD 3.5 billion in Sweden – the highest foreign investment in a European nation. For obvious reasons, the Swedish Government is cautious when it comes to upsetting the feelings of the rulers in Bejing and it is a pity that such concerns make it reluctant to criticize PRC´s abuse of human rights.8 However, let us hope that PRC´s recent openness to the world, it´s massive investments in the development of poor nations and great interest in ecological issues eventually will be accompanied by an acceptance of free speech and support of human rights, not only globally, but also within PRC and Hong Kong.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/free-speech-hong-kong-protests/feed/0The Role of Education in Breaking down the Walls of Ignorancehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/role-education-breaking-walls-ignorance/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=role-education-breaking-walls-ignorance
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/role-education-breaking-walls-ignorance/#respondFri, 26 Jul 2019 11:53:32 +0000Blerim Mustafahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162585Promoting peaceful and inclusive societies through education

Access to education is key to facilitate the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies. Photo credit: Getty Images

By Blerim MustafaGENEVA, Jul 26 2019 (IPS)

Education constitutes an important building block to enhance inter-faith dialogue, cultural exchange between ethnic and linguistic groups, counter violent extremist narratives and promote peaceful and inclusive societies. The founder of Modern India, Mahatma Gandhi, once said:

“If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”

Yet current trends tend to be in denial of this reality. At no time has there been greater need than now for sensible strategies aimed at lifting the veil of ignorance that shapes public opinion. Ignorance and fear are leading to violence and social fragmentation. disrupting the harmony of diverse, multi-ethnic societies. The world is currently witnessing the proliferation of xenophobic populism and white supremacists in advanced societies, but also the rise of Islamophobic demagogery. There is also a wave of extremist violence in all parts of the world. The cause of these phenomena may differ but all feed on the rejection of the Other.

Of great concern is, of course, the exposure of frustrated or marginalised youths to terrorist and violent extremist groups. They lack religious or ideological awareness and fall easy prey to media and social media manipulations. The doubts and frustrations that they experience are not being addressed adequately and hit the wall of unresponsive societies. And, as in all social movements, there are individuals or groupings which take advantage of this latent anger for their own vested interests. They harness it with the objective to achieve positions of power through violence or through undermining national unity.

How can one counter extremist narratives through education? Is the latter the ultimate silver-bullet to address prevailing toxic narratives fuelling extremist and violent ideologies?

Indeed, moving towards social harmony starts with a first step: that of educating our youth. In times of community fragmentation, equal access to education can open vital spaces for inclusiveness, reconciliation and dialogue. Education is a particularly effective means for promoting inclusive and equitable societies, as it targets one of the most receptive and unbiased audiences: the youth. Mrs. Irina Bokova, the former Director-General of UNESCO, noted in this sense that “the risks and opportunities we face call for a paradigm shift that can only be embedded in our societies through education and learning.”

There are numerous paths for addressing this social ill that spreads in both advanced and developing countries. In countries affected by the surge of populism and extremist violence, special efforts should be made to improve the education system. Through education, youth and other vulnerable social segments of societies can be empowered to move beyond biases and preconceptions that they may have inherited. This will help to promote the immunity of youths against the rise of extremist forces that we see at present times. It will help the traumatized among them to come to terms with the horrors witnessed from foreign invasions or extremist violence. In rich and advanced societies, it will aim at rolling-back the devastating impact of hate speech. At the same time, we must recognize that the rise of populism responds in part to the inertia of established political parties that for much too long have failed to address social issues.

Communities should likewise celebrate both the commonality of values and the specificities of practices of diverse faiths as expressions of enrichment through pluralism. It is necessary therefore to explore models of education rooted in religious teachings and in inclusive secularity. Through their thoughtful intertwining, one can contribute to the emergence of a society that embraces religious plurality and harnesses unity in diversity. Archbishop and former Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu once said: “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.”

Moreover we should call on religious authorities and lay leaders of different faiths and cultures who bear the responsibility to correct the unscrupulous misrepresentations of values and beliefs. They must unite and harness the collective power of religions and creeds for peace-building. Religious leaders can play an important role in providing counselling to address radicalist thoughts and to promote the values of tolerance, coexistence and dialogue. They must refute the stereotyping of caricatural differences between religions and cultures that breed hatred.

For a variety of historical and modern-day political reasons, emphasis has been put on the differences existing between faiths and value systems. It remains the duty of religious leaders to show that, in themselves, religions are not problematic. What is problematic is their distortion to serve political purposes and vested interests. The synergies of providing access to education built on common universal values makes a strong contribution towards the realization of social stability and peace. In the joint declaration on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together signed on 4 February 2019 in Abu Dhabi by HH Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar His Eminence Ahmed el-Tayeb, we are reminded of the “importance of awakening religious awareness and the need to revive this awareness in the hearts of new generations through sound education and an adherence to moral values and upright religious teachings.”

Indeed, the great religions of the world bear a unique fundamental message of peace, tolerance and compassion. Only through dialogue between populations and regions of all cultures and religious faiths can the bridges of understanding and tolerance be built.

Blerim Mustafa, Project and communications officer, the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue. Postgraduate researcher (Ph.D. candidate) at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester (UK).

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/role-education-breaking-walls-ignorance/feed/0The Precipitous Barbarisation of Our Timeshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/precipitous-barbarisation-times/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=precipitous-barbarisation-times
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/precipitous-barbarisation-times/#commentsTue, 23 Jul 2019 10:51:51 +0000Roberto Saviohttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162526When all is said and done, it appears that Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher who had a dire vision of man, was not totally wrong. From the frivolous to the serious, in just a week we have had four items of news which would not happen in a normal world. An English porn […]

When all is said and done, it appears that Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher who had a dire vision of man, was not totally wrong.

From the frivolous to the serious, in just a week we have had four items of news which would not happen in a normal world. An English porn beauty with 86,000 followers on social media has put bottles of the water she bathes in on sale at 30 pounds a bottle and has sold several thousand bottles.

Roberto Savio

A survey in Brazil found out that 7% of citizens believe that the earth is flat (40 percent of American schools teach that the world was created in a week, according to the Bible, so there cannot be ancient civilisations) Another survey, this time of members of the British Tory party, who seem likely to elect Boris Johnson as prime minister (not exactly a triumph of reason) are so in favour of a “hard” Brexit that they do not care if this means the exit of Scotland and the end of the United Kingdom. Finally, in order to win election, US president Donald Trump has made racism one of his banners and, in a country of immigrants, this has given him an increase of 5 points in opinion polls.

There are so many signs of barbarisation that they would fill a book… and, as Euripides famously wrote: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

It is not a popular task, but we have to look at the reality and observe that, in the most scientifically and technologically developed period of history, we are living in times of precipitous barbarisation.

Social inequality has become the basis for the new economy. People have now lowered their expectations and are prepared to work part-time in a precarious job, where young people (according to the International Labour Organisation) can hope for a retirement pension of 600 euro a month. This has been accepted by the political system. We even have a study from Spain according to which, in the present housing market, nearly 87% of people need 90% of their salary just to rent a house.

Today, for many, a salary means survival, not a dignified life. The new economy has developed the so-called gig economy: you work to distribute food, but you are a co-entrepreneur without any of the rights of an employee, for an amount that will never allow you to marry. Children have grown accustomed to look at phenomena such as poverty or war as natural. And now politics are not based on ideas but on how you can successfully exploit the guts of the people, waving banners against immigrants (when we are witnessing a rapid fall in the birth rate) and splintering countries between ”We” who represent the people and “You” enemy of the country. The United States is the best example, where Republicans consider Democrats enemies of the United States. And this brings us to a central question: have Trump, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and company not been elected democratically? And they are the symptom or the cause of the “populocracy” which is replacing democracy?

It is not possible to offer a sociological or historical study here. Let us just use a bite: we have gone from the Gutenberg era into a new era – the Zuckerberg era.

Those who greeted the arrival of the Internet with enthusiasm also did so because it would democratise communication and therefore bring about greater participation. The hope was to see a world where horizontal communication would replace the vertical system of information which Gutenberg made possible. Information was, in fact, a support for states and business that used it to reach citizens, who had no recourse to feedback. With Internet, people could now speak directly throughout the world and the propaganda which accompanied its arrival was not considered relevant: it is not important to know, it is important to know where to find It. Well, we have all the statistics on how Internet has affected the general level of culture and dialogue.

The attention span of people has declined dramatically. The majority of Internet users do not stay on an item more than 15 seconds. In the last five years, book volumes have been shortened by 29 pages. Today, articles longer than 650 words are not accepted by columnists’ services. The last meeting of editors of international news agencies decided to lower the level of news from the level of 22 years to that of 17 years. In Europe, the percentage of people who buy at least one book a year now stands at 22% (in the United States it is now 10.5%). According to a recent study in Italy, only 40% of the population is able to read and understand a book. In the same country, 13% of libraries have closed in the last ten years. A very popular transmission in Spain was ”59 seconds” which saw a number of people debate round a table; at the 59th seconds their microphones would disappear. Today, the dream of a TV interviewer is that the person interviewed will give a shorter answer than the question. Newspapers are for people over forty. And there is a unanimous complaint about the level of students entering the university: not all are free from mistakes of orthography and syntax. And the list could continue practically ad infinitum.

The problem of barbarisation has major relevance for political participation. The Gutenberg generations were accustomed to dialogue and discussion. Today, 83% of Internet users (80% under the age of 21), do so only in the virtual world they carved out for themselves. People of Group A gather only with people of Group A. If they come across somebody from Group B, they insult each other. Politicians have been able to adjust rapidly to the system. The best example is Trump. All US newspapers together have a circulation of 60 million copies (ten million those of quality, both conservative and progressive). Trump has 60 million followers who take Trump’s tweets as information. The do not buy newspapers, and if they watch TV it is Fox, which is Trump’s amplifier. No wonder that over 80% of Trump’s voters would vote for him again. And the media, which have lost the ability to offer analysis and cover processes, not just events, take the easy path. Let us follow famous people and make the famous more famous. Analytical journalism is disappearing. In the United States it exists thanks to grants … in every European country, there are few quality papers left, and the largest circulation goes to tabloids which spare their readers the effort of thinking. The Daily Mirror in Britain and Bild in Germany are the best examples.

Internet has made everybody a communicator. This is a fantastic achievement. But in this increasing barbarisation, people also use the Internet for transmitting false information, stories based on fantasy, without any of the quality controls that the media world used to have. And artificial intelligence has been taking over, creating many false accounts, which now interfere in the electoral process, as was proven in the last US elections. We have to add to this that the algorithms used by the owners of the Internet aim to trap the attention of users in order to keep them as much as possible. This month, El Pais published a long study entitled “The toxic effects of YouTube”, where it shows how its algorithms push the viewer to items that are of fantasy, pseudoscientific and of great attraction.

This is due to the fact that the owners have become fabulously rich by transforming citizens into consumers. They find out our identity, and they sell it to companies for their marketing, and also for elections. Those owners have unprecedented wealth, never achieved in the real world: not only in that of production, but even in the world of finance, which has become a casino with no control. The entire world of production of services and goods, man-made, is now close to a trillion dollars a day; that same day, financial flows reach 40 trillion dollars. Jeff Bezos ‘s divorce gave his wife 38 billion dollars. That is equal to the annual average income of 20,000 dollars of 19 million people. No wonder that 80 individuals now possess the same wealth as 2.3 billion people (in 2008, they were 1,200 individuals).

According to historians, greed and fear are great engines of change in history. That was also true in the Gutenberg era. But now, they have triggered a combination of both in a short period of time. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the doctrine of liberal globalisation arrived with such strength that Margaret Thatcher (who with Ronald Reagan ushered in the new vision of individual profits and elimination of social goods) famously talked of TINA: There Is No Alternative.

The entire political system, including Social Democrats, accepted riding a system of values based on greed and unfettered competition at individual level, at state level and at international level. It took twenty years to understand that the poor have become poorer, and the rich richer, and that states have lost much of their sovereignty to multinational corporations and the world of finance. It is worth noting that, in 2009, in order to save a corrupt and inefficient financial system, the world spent 12 trillion dollars (the United States alone, 4 trillion). Since that rescue, banks have paid the impressive amount of 800 billion dollars in penalties for illicit activities.

The financial crisis of 2009 has triggered a wave of fear. Let us not forget that until 2009, there were no sovereignist, populist, xenophobic parties anywhere, except for Le Pen in France. Soon old traps such as “in name of the nation” and “the defence of religion” were resurrected by politicians able to ride fear. A new scapegoat – immigrants – was found and populocrats are now undermining democracy everywhere.

Populocracy is the new wave. Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi ushered in a new language, and that language has now been updated by Salvini, Trump and so on. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are the new medium and now the medium is the message. The old elite had not found a new language.

The Zuckerberg era is an era of greed and fear. Zuckerberg is now attempting to create a global currency, the Libra, to be used by his 2.3 billion users. Until now, states were the only entities able to emit money, a symbol of the nation. Zuckerberg’s currency is based entirely on the Internet and will have no control or regulations. In case of a default, we will have a world crisis without precedent. In the Gutenberg era, this was not possible.

But who has made able Jeff Bezos to give 38 billion dollars to a former wife? Who has elected Trump and Salvini and company, who speak on behalf of the nation and the people, and turn those who do not agree into enemies of the nation and the people, creating an unprecedented polarisation, accompanied by an orgy of revolt against science and knowledge, which have supported the elite, and must now be put aside for the good of people.

This process of barbarisation should not obscure an old proverb: every country has the government it deserves. It is called democracy. However, the traditional elite has no code of communication with the new era. The answer will come from citizen mobilization.

A young Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, has done more with her stubbornness to raise awareness about impending climate change than the entire political system. Even Trump (albeit for electoral reasons) has now declared that climate change is important.

Today, there many “points of light“ appearing in the world. The elections in Istanbul are a good example, as are the mobilisation in Hong Kong, Sudan and Nicaragua, among many others. Let us hope we will reach a point where people will take the reins of the process and awake the world from the precipitous course of barbarisation. Even Thomas Hobbes concluded that humankind will always, soon or later, find the right path, and give itself good governance. He thought that an elite would always be able to lead the masses.

Well, elites are now the Greta Thunbergs of the world.

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti neoliberal global governance. Director for international relations of the European Center for Peace and Development.. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/precipitous-barbarisation-times/feed/1It Takes Listening to Children to End Violencehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/takes-listening-children-end-violence/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=takes-listening-children-end-violence
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/takes-listening-children-end-violence/#respondMon, 22 Jul 2019 16:23:36 +0000Nomu Oslin and Litebohohttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162517We see many challenges that affect children around the world. Child marriage, corporal punishment, voting ages, air pollution, teachers going on strike… It’s been great to speak and have world leaders at the UN listen when we talk about these issues. It’s been clear that leaders are open to hearing from children and learning what […]

We see many challenges that affect children around the world. Child marriage, corporal punishment, voting ages, air pollution, teachers going on strike…

It’s been great to speak and have world leaders at the UN listen when we talk about these issues. It’s been clear that leaders are open to hearing from children and learning what kids have to say.

But even then, it doesn’t always seem like leaders are ready to move from talking to action. It’s weird that there are all these urgent issues to tackle, but leaders aren’t acting right away.

When we talked with [Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children] Najat Maalla M’jid, she said she’s going to try and change this. She will push the United Nations to work to end violence against children. She also offered to listen to children’s ideas, recommendations, and solutions.

Governments must make changes to end violence and stop child marriage. And it’s really important for governments to listen to children’s voices and stop underestimating our abilities. Children can offer ideas too, and its children who are the next generation.

Last week, we learned that every country is connected together, and issues that affect one country often affect others as well. Even though countries have different languages, cultures, and ways of learning, many problems that affect children are the same.

Child marriage and sexual abuse affect children all over the world. Child marriage is a horrific form of violence. It violates girls’ rights and negatively affects their ability to access education and health.

In Lesotho and many other countries, girls are forced to marry due to poverty, property grabbing, sexual abuse, premarital pregnancies and neglect. The laws that protect children are not effectively implemented and enforced.

We also need to stop thinking that punishing kids by hitting them is an acceptable discipline method. Just like child marriage, we need to realise that psychological abuse and corporal punishment of students is a problem in many countries, and maybe by working all together it will be easier to stop it.

Often governments have put some good laws in place, but they don’t always work because people don’t know about them. Adults need to be told about the new laws, otherwise they’re going to keep breaking them and the violence is only going to continue.

Children and teachers, for instance, need to know that there are rules about how children can be treated in schools. Sometimes the laws don’t match up, and so old marriage laws need to be updated so they don’t have lower ages than child protection laws.

When children get involved, they can help. For example, many children are born and live their life without having a birth certificate. Many countries make it hard for them to access their basic rights or go to school without a birth certificate.

In one village in Indonesia, many children were rejected when they wanted to register at school because they did not have a birth certificate. Thankfully, the child parliament was able to work with the village government to get a birth certificate for all children.

They arranged a “mass birth certificate” campaign and finally, 100% of the children in the village have birth certificates.

Children can help create the necessary changes in communities, but we need to be informed in order to do so. Child parliaments and youth groups can help raise community awareness about child protection laws and give us a space to share about our experiences.

Before sessions, not many girls knew that child marriage is against the law. After our meetings, children are more aware and have a better understanding of violence.

Every child has a right to participate. We hope our examples show how the voices of children are important and can help. If the government wants the world free from violence, involve us.

The main target of ending violence against children is a child. Therefore, the voices of children should be heard. If violence against children is stopped, we will have a better life, and we need this now, not in the future.

*As a general rule, World Vision doesn’t share the last names of children under 18.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/takes-listening-children-end-violence/feed/0Finland’s Education System Leads Globallyhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/finlands-education-system-leads-globally/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=finlands-education-system-leads-globally
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/finlands-education-system-leads-globally/#respondMon, 22 Jul 2019 11:35:44 +0000Lakshi De Vass Gunawardenahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162508Finland has garnered attention for its top-notch education, and the newly appointed Minister of Education for Finland is planning to continue with the success of her country’s education system through various and innovative approaches. “In education, Finland has the lead according to many international comparisons,” Li Andersson, the newly appointed Minister of Education for Finland, […]

Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed (right) meets with Li Andersson, Minister of Education of Finland.
18 July 2019. Credit: United Nations, New York

By Lakshi De Vass GunawardenaUNITED NATIONS, Jul 22 2019 (IPS)

Finland has garnered attention for its top-notch education, and the newly appointed Minister of Education for Finland is planning to continue with the success of her country’s education system through various and innovative approaches.

“In education, Finland has the lead according to many international comparisons,” Li Andersson, the newly appointed Minister of Education for Finland, said at a briefing at the Finnish consulate in New York on July 19.

Most recently, she pointed out, the London-based Economist ranked Finland as number one in delivering future-oriented skills through education.

“Thereby, Finland is best equipped to adapt education system to deliver skills for problem-solving and collaboration, as well as foster creativity, civic-awareness and participation,” she added.

The briefing was hosted by the Consulate General of Finland, with a guest speaker from Columbia University.

Andersson said investment in education is key to all of the successes “we have seen in Finnish society, so it is key for social cohesion, it is key for equality, and it is key for building economic progress and for economic growth.”

“The Finnish education system is one of the top performing education systems in the world,” she declared

Finland has been ranked as one of the happiest and most successful countries in the world, and most recently was ranked as the number one country for higher education by The Economist.

In terms of what other countries, such as the United States should learn from Finland, Dr. Samuel E. Abrams, director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University had this to say: “We should follow Finland in testing only small samples of students rather than testing all students”.

“Our approach forces teachers to teach to the test. As we test all students in reading and math in grades 3-8, we generate undue stress for students, teachers, and parents alike”.

Moreover, he pointed out, “in focusing on reading and math, we crowd out time for history, science, music, art, crafts, and physical education. And students need those subjects as well as plenty of play for a well-rounded education.”

“Second, we should follow Finland in preparing teachers with high-quality master’s programs in pedagogical theory and practice.

“Third, we should follow Finland in paying teachers well and giving them significant autonomy,” he added.

“Finally, we should follow Finland in funding our schools fairly. That means more money per student at schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods, not less. We base funding on property taxes, which means wealthy districts have significantly more money to spend per pupil than poor districts”.

“None of this is rocket science,” he said. “But that does not make it easy.”

Dr. Abrams concluded: “We must follow in Finland’s path in altering the way we think about children and their future. This requires, one, thinking about child development through the eyes of the child, which means a well-rounded curriculum; two, reconceiving our social contract to ensure a high-quality education for all children; and three, esteeming teachers as pillars of the community.”

With that said, the education system in Finland has much room for improvement. “We see growing disparities in the learning results.” Andersson said, in terms of learning results.

“There is a difference between boys and girls and also some growing regional differences, and also a stronger difference where the pupils home background will affect the learning results more than before.”

“Inequality hampers growth and otherwise,” she added.

To combat these worrisome findings, Andersson and the Finnish government have set three main priorities to be tackled in the coming years.

“The first of these priorities is raising the educational level of the whole population.” Andersson said.

“We are also seeing a tendency where we are seeing the growing level of education has actually stopped.” She went on to cite that the generation of the 1970’s, and in Finland it is the current generation that has the highest level of education.

“The second priority of the government is reducing inequality gaps in education referring to what I said about earlier about the worrisome trends, and the third priority is focusing on continuous education…. learning should be something that we do all the time, and we should have the possibility to engage in all the time, no matter whether if we are working or outside working life or studying.”

For raising the level of education, Andersson plans on ensuring that all students have a degree on the upper secondary level and plans on raising the amounts of adults on the third educational level (post-secondary education) to 50% by 2030.

In order to implement this, Andersson intends on devising a Road Map, and a document that will reach Parliament.

She also highlighted the importance of addressing the equality gaps and strengthening the whole Finnish education system, from early childhood education to primary school.

She also intends on raising the compulsory education age to 18 years old. “16% of the overt generations in Finland are without a degree on the secondary level.” She noted.

“We know that the employment rate of people with only primary education backgrounds is around 40% at the moment, and that has been going down all the time.”

She cited the changing labor market, and how that calls for a change in the education system.

In terms of closing education gaps, Andersson cited a significant focus on early childhood development, as that is key.

Such actions to help assist this goal is to reduce group sizes for children over 3 years old and ensuring that every child has the right to at least 40 hours a week to early childhood education and care “no matter if their parents are working or unemployed.”

Andersson is also piloting a two- year preschool to see how it will affect participation rates in early childhood care, as well as to observe the effects it will have on learning results in primary education.

Furthermore, Andersson plans on providing support for maternity and childhood clinics.
For continuing education and the future of work, Andersson is unsure, as the labor market is drastically changing but noted that “It is clear that the knowledge requirement will grow.”

“Education is the best tool we have, and we should think of it as an investment not an expenditure.” She concluded.

She added that students should “just focus on things you’re motivated about, not too get too stressed, I think it is a shame there is a lot of pressure on the students now, with their stress with finances etc.”

But she offered encouragement and stated that students should “not think too much about what government is saying about how fast you should study and finally, “use the possibilities you have at the university”